What a human rights complaint by Alberta's only female cardiovascular surgeon says about sexism in surgery – Part 1

Guests: Dr. Teresa Kieser, Dr. Nancy Baxter, Dr. Marisa Louridas

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Although over the last many years we've made quite good progress in increasing the representation of women in surgery, when we look at the effect that that has had on medicine and surgery, it essentially has had minimal impact on the degree of mistreatment or the degree of harassment or the degree of bias that we see against women in the profession.

MG: That's Dr. Fahima Dossa. She's going into her final year of residency in general surgery at the University of Toronto. She also just earned a PhD studying gender discrimination and systemic inequities faced by women in surgery. It's a research that she pursued despite some warnings.

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As a trainee, I've had many great mentors, and some of those people have had concerns about how doing work in this area may affect my career. And so they've cautioned me on doing work in this area, and I very much think it comes from a place of real mentorship based on their own experiences as they came through their training and went through the process of looking for jobs. But I do think it's sad that again, in 2022, it's still not okay to discuss these topics openly. It's still not okay to do research in this area.

MG: Dr. Fahima Dossa was just recognised for her work, exposing the experiences of female surgeons. She was awarded the prestigious Governor-General's Gold Medal for Academic Excellence. Women surgeons are beginning to talk about their experiences and over the next hour will be speaking about them, starting with Dr. Teresa Kieser. She is Alberta's only woman cardiac surgeon and has been for more than 30 years. She's also a professor of cardiac sciences at the University of Calgary. Dr. Kieser, good morning.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Good morning, Matt. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me to do this.

MG: It's a great pleasure to have you on the programme. I want to begin just briefly with your complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission. What are you claiming?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Well, there has been difficulty working due to constantly watching your back to try and head off complaints. And this has gone on for decades.

MG: Tell me more about that. Constantly watching your back.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Oh, just people. You know, when I would come back from a trip, there'd be something lying in wait for me to address, some complaint. And I do [unintelligible] bypass surgery predominantly. And one of the major complaints is I take too long in the operating room, but this does take long. If that's the only thing they can fault, they can't. They've never faulted my results.

MG: What else specifically is is within those complaints? What are you facing that would lead you to be looking over your shoulder 30 years into your career?

DR. TERESA KIESER: I could almost guess what they would be targeting, and I would dictate the reason I did this in my operative note. So that if it did come into question, I could say exactly why I did something.

MG: So the questioning in some ways, your ability as a surgeon?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Yes, that's right. That's right.

MG: Part of this is also what the language of the workplace and how you are referred to in the workplace. Can you talk more about that?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Well, you know, I am amazed at one thing that people have told me that they have been seeing. This one professor called it Terry bashing, also known as Terry for decades. And I had no idea it was so apparent I would just ignore it at rounds. Just belittled, talked over just an idea to the point where people this one particular doctor would not go to the rounds because she couldn't stand it. Well, why.

MG: Would that doctor what would that doctor see that that.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Would just create critical just innuendos, just subtle barbs, belittling me. You know, this has gone on for a long time, and I've always believed to I just ignored it and took the high road because as a woman in a male dominated field, you don't want to rock the boat. You're so happy to be doing what you're doing. And you made it this far. So you don't want to. You know, this this human rights complaint is to shed light on the conscious and unconscious bias towards women in the workplace.

MG: And so part of this is about the pervasive sexism that you're describing, gender discrimination. There's also an issue of pay inequity.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Yes. Yes. For the most part, it was equal. But in each opportunity that arose, they would seise wrongly to curtail my pay, saying, well, she's had surgery, she she probably can't do this. Maybe we should just stop her pay for three months, that sort of thing. And this would go on with emails, not including me, of course.

MG: Emails that were circulating around that you found out about that were about you?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Yes. Yes. One of my dear colleagues sent me these e-mails and said, we shouldn't be doing this.

MG: What do you think is at the root of this?

DR. TERESA KIESER: And I think it's a it's a change. It is a change to have a woman in a male dominated field and changes to. And I think they just want to keep it the way it was. And that isn't going to happen. Women are extremely talented and gifted and dedicated and just the way we need both sexes for the world to thrive. You need both sexes in every walk of life. Because we bring different perspectives. But. But it's hard to hard to change.

MG: Why is it important for you to speak out now about this and to make this complaint now?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Because I'm nearing the end of my career and I thought, wow, we have eight pretty thoracic surgery residents. Four of them are female. I just thought, I cannot just fade into the sunset having gone through all this without bringing the light of day onto it. And this is the only way change will get affected is if the light of day is shed on the iniquities that women suffer to get to where they are. Yes, it's hard enough to do heart surgery. Never mind trying to watch your back and somebody is going to attack what you've done.

MG: I want to bring a couple of other surgeons into our conversation and we'll come back specifically to what you have gone through. But let's broaden this out a moment. Dr. Marisa Louridas is a colorectal surgeon at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, assistant professor as well of general surgery at the University of Toronto. And she's with me in our studio. Dr. Nancy Baxter is a Canadian surgeon and public health researcher, and she's also head of Melbourne University's School of Population and Global Health, and she is in Melbourne, Australia. Hello to you both.

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Hi, Matt.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: Hi, Matt. Thanks for having us.

MG: Thanks for being here. Dr. Baxter, what has been your experience as a surgeon? You just heard Dr. Keyser talk about what she has gone through, this idea of looking over her back, of feeling constantly undermined. What's your experience been like, Dr. Baxter?

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Well, just just reflecting on what we've just heard. I mean, it's so tragic that that you have someone that's had their entire career, they've had to cope with this constant questioning of their abilities because of their gender. And this is something that, you know, I felt but but to a lesser degree. But certainly you kind of feel like nothing you do is enough. And your abilities are generally questioned more than your male colleagues. And part of that is because you when people think about a surgeon, they generally think about a man. And so and they think about qualities that are more, you know, so-called masculine when they think about surgeons. Surgeons are are people who who get things done, who are decisive, who can be, you know, abrasive or, you know, quick to judgement, people who are who take action versus, you know, what people generally think of as feminine, which is, you know, team building, collegial, collaborative, that type of thing. And so as a woman in surgery, you're just kind of never quite fit in. And there's always, you know, some some tendency to kind of question what you do and question your results. You know, when you do well, it's luck when you do when when you when something happens and there's a mistake or, you know, a patient does poorly, then it's your fault. Whereas with men, it's kind of the opposite. You know, when they do well, that's their skill. And when something happens, then that's bad luck. And that kind of follows you the entire time and it does wear on you.

MG: That sense could exist outside of the medical profession, but you're suggesting that that exists as well inside that that idea even of of who we think a surgeon is, what we think a surgeon is.

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Absolutely. I mean, when there's a riddle that that talks about, you know, somebody as a parent and child or in a car accident, they get to the hospital and the surgeon says, I can't operate on this child because, you know, it's my child. I can't operate on this on this person. And most people when when I ask with the riddle, you know, why can't this person operate on the child? They say, well, maybe the father who was in the accident maybe has a husband, maybe the father's divorced. They think of everything other than the fact that maybe the woman is a surgeon. People just don't naturally think of women as surgeons, you know? I think hopefully that will change over time. But it's taken too long to change and it's affecting too many people like Theresa over too many years. You know, something's got to we have to do something now to make the lives of women in all careers, in medicine, but in surgery in particular better.

MG: Dr. Louridas. So you have just finished your surgery fellowship in 2020, so a couple of years ago?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: That's right.

MG: What have you I mean, early on in your career, what have you faced and what do you make of what Dr. Keyser was describing in terms of what she's gone through over the course of a long career?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: Right. Well, firstly, I'd really like to thank Dr. Keyser for doing this and bringing this to light, because it's going to make a huge difference for the junior the the junior surgeon like myself. I have to say something to Dr. Baxter. I've I haven't has, I haven't had the time to have that type of experience. And people have been very open to me. I have a male partner, I have two male partners and they're extremely supportive. But I think part of the reason they've become more supportive is because it's become people are becoming more and more aware that this exists and that it's impacted people's career for the negative for a very long time. And so as a junior surgeon, when I reflect on it, I'm still not seen as a surgeon. That's a given to to the public and to my patients. When I walk into a room, they assume that I'm a nurse or another part of the health care team. And that assumption is very, very strong and so much so that I find that I've adapted my behaviours because when I in my first year I would get to the operating room and the patient on the table would say, where's the surgeon? And I'd say, That's me. We've had multiple conversations, so especially in a more of an emergency setting. So what I've come to do is I introduce myself and I say, I'm Dr. Louridas. I'm your surgeon. I will be doing your operation. And I try to make that role very clear because I don't want people to not know who I am. And also, it's important to establish that relationship with the patient. And that's something I know my male colleagues don't have to do. And I think it's because society sees a tall, male, charismatic man as a surgeon, and that's just not the case anymore.

MG: You say it's important to do, but what is it like to have to do that?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: Well, that's that's the thing. I think Dr. Kieser alluded to this. You just are so happy to be doing the job you do in a male environment that you develop behavioural compensation to do it and you kind of don't think about it. But when you do think about it, like, why should I have to do that? But a lot of change has to happen before I think that goes away.

MG: But as you said, I mean, read the beginning. And part of that is, yes, you're a junior surgeon, but still people don't see you as a surgeon.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: That's right. That's right. And there's been multiple movements and conversations about this in order to say I look like a surgeon, whether I'm male or female, any race, any culture, tall, thin, whatever you look like, you can look like a surgeon. And I think it's really important that those platforms have come to light. But it's it needs to continue because even Dr. Baxter mentioned that riddle. My mom knows I'm a surgeon. I mean, she's been through the training with me almost. And I told her the riddle and she said the exact same thing as a Dr. Baxter said, she said, oh well it must be, he must have a husband. And I was like, Mom, that's the surgeon's a woman, it's the child's mother. And she was embarrassed. And it just shows you how ingrained in our cultures are that surgeons are seen as males.

MG: Dr. Baxter, why are there so few women becoming surgeons? I mean, one of the things that's happened is that you see numbers in med schools shifting in. More than half of med students are now women. But why are so few of them going into surgery?

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Well, the numbers in surgery are increasing, but you're right, it's not increasing the way it is in other specialities in surgery, despite there being more than 50% women. And that's not to the benefit of of the profession. Now, as Theresa was saying, you know, the profession benefits by by having both both genders in it. And so if surgeries choosing from less than half of the students now because it's it's choosing men, then it's going to be it's not going to be the benefit of surgery or to our patients. But part of it is something called occupational segregation. So when when we're in medical school, you know, you're you're you're interested in a variety of things and you kind of rely on your preceptors, your mentors, to kind of steer you to the speciality that's most likely to be suitable to you in terms of your skills and your abilities and your personality. And just because women are seen as surgeons, women kind of get steered towards nonsurgical specialities. And even within surgical specialities, they get steered towards things that are considered more appropriate for women. You know, so you hear repeatedly, even in 2022 about medical students who are interested in surgery, if they're women, always getting told, well, it's not a good speciality. If you want to have a family without ever kind of finding out from from the medical student whether they're even interested in family, let alone the fact that there are many women surgeons who have families. So there's always kind of this paternalism, this the steering women away from surgery. And it works because you trust your mentors, you trust the people who are teaching you to kind of steer you in the right direction.

MG: And if you go into surgery, you're steered towards certain things. What people have referred to as the pink ghetto.

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Yeah. I mean, I don't like to kind of use those terms I have. But, you know, all of the specialities in medicine are necessary. Patients need them. We as doctors need them, our colleagues, to be doing things for our patients that that we don't have the skills to do. And so when we devalue professions or part of of certain specialities, it's not for anyone's benefit. It's not to our patients benefit. But that is what happens and women get steered towards those.

MG: Dr. Louridas, I see her nodding as Dr. Baxter was speaking.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I was just thinking about that like I've only been in practise a couple of years and I have medical students come to my operating room and last I'm just coming back from mat leave. So the last six months I was operating, I was quite pregnant and I had multiple medical students come to me and ask, Can I come to your operating room? Can I be there? And afterwards, send me emails saying It's so helpful to see a female in surgery who's having a family and still doing this job. I never dreamed of doing surgery, but now that I see it's possible, I might consider that as an option. And I had one or two, and then I got a flood of emails of students wanting to. Be in that environment. And it just speaks to that. There's this hidden curriculum and it's very strong even in medical school, before they enter the hospital, saying that this is this is might not be for you surgery. It's too difficult. It might not be possible steering. It is medical students away before they've stepped foot in the hospital.

MG: Dr. Keiser, what do you see as behind that gender gap within surgery? You talked at the beginning of it, and one of the reasons why you were speaking up is because of unconscious bias. So what do you what do you think is going on?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Oh, I think it's it's millennia. Okay. It's three things. First of all, it's human nature, which we all have to. It's professional jealousy towards women rising up above men sometimes. And three, it is unconscious bias, which has been present for millennia. I mean, I was very fortunate. My sister and I, my mother insisted that we had a career of all of our own. She said, You don't know what might happen. Your husband might live, you may die. You're going to have children. You must be independent. You must have a career. So that is unusual. That's very unusual. Nowadays, it's women become nurses, men become doctors and lawyers. And I think it's just as as Laurie just said, you know, the the the patients don't expect you to be the doctor, the the surgeon, you know. And so you've got a lot of a lot of changing, for instance, before Christ to do this. So I think these three things.

MG: Dr. Louridas, this why did you become a surgeon?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: So I, I come out firmly. My father, my late father was a surgeon. So we had the surgery world around me. And he always said to me, You can do whatever you want. If you want to do surgery, you can do surgery. I remember going as a high school student to the operating room and thinking, oh, I like this. I had that opportunity just because of circumstance, just to the family I was born to. I think that made all the difference. And then when I went through my rotations, I, I loved the surgical environment. And one of the reasons I chose and was fortunate to come to the University of Toronto is there's a lot of female surgeons in general surgery in different specialities, including Dr. Baxter was at St Michael's. We have people at UCH and in all different surgical specialities, not just the stereotype ones. And I think that that was very important for me to be in that environment so I can choose what I truly love.

MG: So we're going to leave it there for a moment because we have to take a short break. Four News. Dr. Teresa Kieser is Alberta's only female cardiac surgeon. Dr. Nancy Baxter, a Canadian surgeon and head of Melbourne University's School of Population and Global Health. And Dr. Marisa Louridas is a colorectal surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. All three doctors will be back after the break when we turn the conversation towards solutions. But changing the culture of medicine in that operating room. But also what needs to happen to make surgery more welcoming to women doctors? I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stick around. We'll be back in six minutes.

What a human rights complaint by Alberta's only female cardiovascular surgeon says about sexism in surgery – Part

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

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MG: Still to come, Toronto's interim police chief offers an apology to the city's black and indigenous communities after data shows once again that racism plays a role in policing. We'll talk about what needs to follow that apology. But first, we continue our discussion with Canadian women surgeons and the push for change in and out of the operating room.

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MG: Before the news, we were discussing the challenges that women surgeons face working in a speciality that remains dominated by men. Joining me once again are Dr. Teresa Kieser, Alberta's only woman, cardiac surgeon and a professor of cardiac sciences at the University of Calgary. Dr. Marisa Louridas, colorectal surgeon at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto and an assistant professor of general surgery at the University of Toronto. And Dr. Nancy Baxter, a Canadian surgeon and public health researcher and head of Melbourne University's School of Population and Global Health. Hello again, everyone.

GUESTS: Hello. Hello, Matt.

MG: We spoke with a number of women surgeons who, like you, Dr. Larry, this are just starting out their careers. This is Dr. Darby Little, plastic surgeon, resident at the University of Toronto, describing an experience in her first year of residency.

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I was in the operating room and I was with residents and fellows who are trainees and they were all men. And I was very excited to be there. I was expecting questions about anatomy, and when they started talking about who was the best looking female surgeon and started ranking them from back to worst. And I remember I was just quietly sitting there waiting for the operation to finish. And, you know, in retrospect, I think what was so concerning about this experience was as a first year medical student, I wasn't surprised. I wasn't offended. I had almost expected or anticipated this behaviour.

MG: Dr. Marisa Louridas Would you have expected or anticipated that sort of behaviour?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I don't like to hear those stories and it, it like hurts to hear those stories. But it's not surprising. And unfortunately I've been in operating rooms too, and I think most people have where the conversation is, it's not appropriate, especially whether referring to one gender or the other. But most commonly, because the room is full of men, it lands up being against or somewhat discriminatory or or towards female.

MG: You've heard this similar kind of conversations I have.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I wouldn't say it's every day or it's I mean, but I have heard it.

MG: And what do you do in that moment?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I've I don't know if I've taken the right approach. I usually haven't said much, which is probably what Dr. Derby little said the same thing. And I have been asked sometimes to contribute to a conversation like that. And I would just say I don't have anything to contribute and I just leave it at that. So I that's why this conversation is so important, because it happens less and less. I have a I mean, now it's my operating room, so I get to choose the conversation. So it's very different. But I do think it's happening less. And as we bring this conversation to light and, you know, it's in the press in different forms from junior and senior surgeons, it's it's it's it's extremely helpful because the environment is slowly changing, but it needs a lot of work.

MG: Dr. heresa Kieser, how would you describe the culture of surgery?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Well, I think like my colleagues, it is changing. It is. I was just at a meeting for all of cardiac surgeons in Ottawa, and there are some young surgeons who were really, really excellent. And we were giving them we were having a celebration of Linda mitchell was the first woman heart surgeon in Canada and she trained in Toronto. And there was just as many men at this celebration as there were women. And I commented on this to one of our colleagues in Halifax, and he said, well, he said, why wouldn't we be? And I think I think if you as a trainee, you grow up with men and women together, that's what's going to change things. So getting more women into the speciality, it's going to naturally occur. This is, it is going to improve.

MG: What does it tell you that Dr. Loretta wasn't surprised as a young surgeon? She wasn't surprised to hear those comments that we just heard from Dr. Little. Where the conversation in in the operating room. Steers towards sex is commentary about about other women.

DR. TERESA KIESER: I think that is. I mean, I haven't witnessed that recently, that's for sure. I mean, even in my training, I mean, you would. I mean, I remember seeing in my fourth year medicine in Ottawa telling the surgeon I was working with general surgeon that I wanted to be a heart or want to be not [unintelligible] a surgeon. And he just looked at me and in all honesty said, Well, who's going to send you business? You're a woman. So I thought, okay, and I didn't take a French to this. I just thought, Oh, maybe that's it, that's a problem. So I decided to do, I thought I would not do general surgery, which I loved. I love the excitement, as Dr. Lourida just said. You just that your love, the atmosphere, the surgery, it's doing something really quickly and well and and and there's a bit of drama sometimes as well in heart surgery. So that's fun, too. But this, you know, I don't know. It just it will change. I think I will decide to do plastic surgery that well, maybe it's womanly, you know, sitting, sewing eyelids and things. And I walked out of the only operation I have ever walked out on a nose job with blood streaming down a patient a week. I thought, my God, I can't do this. I can't do this for a living. I can't even this is this is my bread and butter. So I went back to the general surgeon at Toronto Western Hospital, and I said, Dr. MATTHEWS, I was told that I wouldn't get business as a woman. He just looked at me, you said angrily, It's just you says they told me I'd never be a university professor, and here I am. He says, you do what you want to do because you will be best at that and don't listen to anybody else. And I've followed that advice ever since.

MG: Dr. Baxter, how would you describe the culture of surgery? In part, if you're trying to change a culture, what is the culture that needs to be changed?

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Yeah, well, I'm just smiling. I'm listening to Theresa because, you know, Dr. MATTHEWS was one of my mentors when I was training and someone really before his time in terms of how he supported women really was always outspoken. If you were talented, he told you you were talented and it didn't really matter to him whether you're a woman or man. But but I don't think that that that he's he was very unique at the time. And unfortunately, in terms of being an ally, in terms of someone who promotes women, I still think that he is not necessarily the norm. And, you know, when you when you heard what Darby went through when she was a medical student, you know, in that operating room hearing female surgeons kind of treated like objects. Yeah, like chattel. So when you when you hear about that, what you kind of wonder is what goes on in the locker room. So, you know, there's there's still this bro culture in in surgery and it's kind of, you know, it's it's it's it's less the outside voice than it was. But I think there's still a lot of things that go on that no one would be proud of in locker rooms and behind people's backs in subtle ways or in non subtle ways that kind of involve men that don't necessarily want to be involved but don't feel the power to be able to say anything. You know, in that operating room where Darby was, there were some junior men. Many of them may not have wanted to participate in that, but because the surgeon was kind of instigating it and pushing it, that they felt the need to participate. And I think we need to change the culture of surgery so that we have more male allies and men are just not willing to participate when something like that has happened and make sure it's very clear that it's not okay with them. And until that happens, you know, you can have all the women in surgery that you want, but until the bro culture changes, I don't think anything's going to change.

MG: Well, you talk about.

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Not knowing fast enough when.

MG: You talk about non subtle. I mean, there was a high profile woman, cardiac surgeon, Dr. Irene Cybulski, who filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. She won. And then the evaluations that she was getting from colleagues and trainees, she was getting notes saying your voice is too shrill and that she's like everyone's mom telling her kids what to do. What is it you say? A bro culture, Dr. Baxter but what is it? The root of that? Where is that coming from? That people would feel not even that they could say that on the inside. Voice But as you say now that's coming to the outside voice.

DR. NANCY BAXTER: I just think it's sexism is deeply pervasive in society. Misogyny is is is very common. We think that we've gotten past it, but we have not. And I think it just comes out, particularly in surgery, which is a speciality, where women are women are still not the norm. Women are not normative either. Men are considered normative in surgery. That is who surgeons are. That that we still allow the to occur. The other thing is about surgery. You know, I'm not sure how most people think surgeons are paid. They may think we're paid by the hospital, but we're not. We we are kind of solo agents that come in to hospitals and we build the government directly. So, you know, well, while we do have, you know, a boss, a chief of surgery, they don't have a ton of power over us. So it's not like, you know, your corporate H.R. can really kind of change the environment or make people do, you know, make everyone do diversity training and things like that. There's more starting to happen that way. But but but surgeons have been allowed to kind of, you know, have worse behaviour than than other specialities. And and then in corporate the corporate world for a long, long time. And this is kind of an expression of that.

MG: Dr. Kieser, where does that come from, do you think? And how have you seen that manifest itself? We've hinted at this at the beginning, but as you've, you know, risen through your career, how have you seen that?

DR. TERESA KIESER: It's the old boys club. It's never been any different. And I think Albert is maybe one of the worse. We're Texas North, you know, because of oil and gas. But it's just it's a culture that has it. It's really hard to change cultures. And I think the more women you get, I mean, the right now, our culture is fabulous, you know, in the hospital after cardiac surgery. And I think it maybe the human rights I don't know but it's it's it's never been better. So I think I think as I said before, shedding light on this will, there's an awful lot of unconscious bias. I think some of these men that sort of talk this way, they don't realise it's offensive because they've been because their father did it, their father's father did it. This is what we're fighting. And I think it's since the MeToo movement. Well, look out. You know, there's a lot of inequities that are happening on every front sex race, you know, or whatever. So I think it's just one culture, one step at a time. We will it will be changed. I think it is improving.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I'll just add like the unconscious bias piece is a huge is for me what I notice most and things that have helped to start to change that too is not just having females in surgery, as Dr. Baxter was saying, but Dr. Baxter and [unintelligible], they put out this great research that all of a sudden it wasn't just anecdotal like my experience, just my experience. I was like, This is what the evidence shows. There is a real problem here. And I brought the conversation to the forefront and that's when I think it really helped get our male colleagues I like open their eyes to see the evidence. Objective evidence is showing that this is real. And so when I started Practise, my colleague, who's the same year as me, we started a central referral and it was to combat this problem of females getting referrals that are different and less lucrative referrals.

MG: So what is that just for people who aren't in that world? So explain what this is. We've talked about it a bit on this programme in terms of changing the health system, but how have you done?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: So what we've done in our practises, when we receive a referral from a family doctor or a gastroenterologist or someone who's sending us a patient who needs colorectal surgery, then it comes to us and we split those referrals between myself and him. So even if it's directed to Dr. Chesney or Dr. Louridas, we split the referrals to the areas that we can. I mean, we both have areas, subspecialties that we don't do, but the stuff we do the same. So the cancer surgery, we split those equally. And that way it, it, it helps against that bias because that bias, the referral from the from the other family doctors or the gastroenterologist, I don't think it's conscious. I've noticed a few people always send to my colleague and it's not because they don't like I think they're they don't even know they're doing it.

MG: But they see him as the surgeon.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: They see him as the surgeon. But I don't think they're seeing me as I don't really it's hard to pinpoint, but I don't think it's meant in malice. I really don't. I just think that they don't it's so deeply entrenched that they send off the referral and it goes to the male surgeon. And by having practises like this where we split it, it helps and we've got very little pushback. If I see a patient who originally was supposed to be to Dr. Chesney, I've really never had someone say to me, Oh, but I thought I was seeing a male. Like once they get past that, they know that I'm the surgeon and they know that I'm they're coming to my clinic. It's been fine. So it practises like that I think can help.

MG: Dr. Baxter That's one example of how to try to change the culture. How do you go about doing this? I mean, there are there are. As Dr. Louridas has had structural changes you can make. What needs to happen to change this culture?

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Well, you know, I think as Marisa said, part of it is everyone acknowledging that this problem does exist. And you know that that's part of the reason why. [Unintelligible] I did the research that we did. I mean, it wasn't kind of solution focussed research. It was, you know, describing problems. And and as as Marisa said, it's problems that women physicians had felt before, like the referral bias, that they weren't getting the same number of referrals and the same type of referrals. And people have said this for a long time, but there was always something that that could be identified. That was the reason. It wasn't because of sexism. It was because, you know, somebody wasn't able to do that type of surgery or somebody wasn't talented enough or available enough. And so there was always a reason that could be pinpointed for it. But when you look at all the surgeons in Ontario and you describe this as, you know, a pervasive thing that, you know, essentially male physicians are less likely to refer to female surgeons. Female physicians are kind of about equal in terms of their likelihood of referring to men and women surgeons. So when you look at that, you know, basically it's obvious that women in surgeons in Ontario are going to have a harder time building their practise, maintaining their practise, making as much income from their practise. And patients are not necessarily going to see the best surgeon for them because they might not be referred to that surgeon, because that surgeon might be a woman.

MG: And so is that hospitals that need to take that on or who handles that?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Well, I think everyone needs to take it on because in part, because we are kind of this independent contractor, it's hard for hospitals to necessarily entirely control it. But certainly hospitals can do things like manage our lists and say, well, you know, you get this much more time. If you're waiting list is too long, you start start having to you have to start giving those patients to somebody else who has opened or overtime. Instead, what often happens is they give men more O.R. time because they have longer waiting lists and they have longer waiting lists because they have the biased referral system. So it just kind of, you know, perpetuates itself. So hospitals have a role in that. You know, our so our college has a role in it and making sure people are aware of it, making sure people, you know, don't let things like race and sex and and sexual identity influence how they refer people. I mean, at all levels we need to focus on this. And so it's not just, you know, the one person that can make the change. It has to be at all levels to actually make the lives of female surgeons better.

MG: Dr. Kieser When we started talking and I asked you what was the basis of your complaint and what you had faced? There was a big sigh at the beginning of your answer, and I just wonder about the toll that you have that this has taken on you over the course of your career. There's been a number of complaints filed against you. All of them were dismissed. But there was also a year in which you weren't allowed to operate while a complaint from your colleague was being reviewed. What's the toll been like for you?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Well, it's better now because I'm back operating. But I can tell you putting someone through this kind of ordeal is inhuman. I had some of the darkest days of my life. You know, taking away some of his ability to give is the worst thing one can do. But the people who really suffered were the patients. I could not help. And the student. Cardiac surgeons. I could not teach. I was teaching hefty lectures every so often, and I was giving a talk on arterial grafting. And one of the young residents said, But, Dr. Keyser, if we are working with surgeons who don't do this, how are we to learn this? Because I'm the predominant arterial grafting surgeon and I just said, you maybe do a fellowship away somewhere and find it, but so I am thrilled to be back. So not only working, I'm teaching.

MG: Why didn't you leave? I mean, you could think that with that kind of pressure and that sort of heat that you would get, that you would say, enough, okay, fine. Life is long and I'm this is too much and I'm going to go and do something else or just leave this profession entirely. What kept you going through it?

DR. TERESA KIESER: I could not live with myself if I just rolled over and played dead. This is wrong. I'm at the end of my career, but I can not ignore my women colleagues coming after me. Basically, I'm doing this for them.

MG: And so at the end at the end of your career, what advice would you give to someone like Dr. Loretta's, who is at the beginning of her career?

DR. TERESA KIESER: Oh, I would just as Dr. [unintelligible] said, do what you want to do, because this is what you'll be best at. You should follow your heart, not your mind. Let no one to turn you. Do you remember Donna Strickland? She was the associate professor at University of Waterloo who got the 2018 Nobel Prise for physics. She was asked for her advice for future scientists and she said, Well, if somebody says something you do not believe and just think to yourself they're wrong and you're right and keep going. That is pretty much the way I was thinking. And I am the same. You don't second guess yourself. Too often women second guess themselves and say, Oh, there must be grain of truth and that men don't do that. Men think that other person's wrong. We have to have a little bit of that in us. You don't become sort of no at all, but you must not second guess yourself as a woman because you are a woman. And I think too often women do that. But like Madeleine Albright said, it took me a long time to find my voice. And this was Madeleine Albright. If she took a long time, that is another big message for women. You must speak up. Too often we say, Oh, we're asked if just this gender's affected us. Well, yes, but even if never, really, we've just worked through it. That's not the answer.

MG: Is that advice, Dr. Louridas, that you think you could employ in your own practise? You have big smile as you're listening to what she was saying.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: Absolutely. Thank you. I think it's you know, it's again, there has been change. And I feel fortunate because there are times of doubt, as she said. And I think to myself, some of the best surgeons I've worked with and trained under in Toronto are female, and sometimes it's really helpful to have that experience. And many senior surgeons who are female, who paved, who began to pave the path never had that. And so it's that's been very formative to me, but we still have work to do. And as as she said, like we and Dr. Said decided to, we can't just wait and assume it's going to change with more females. We're just going to wait. We have to continue to do work to move this forward and and make it make it happen more quickly. Because otherwise, if we just wait and wait, there probably is going to be very small progress.

MG: So I'll ask you all three. This final question, which is what is that one most important step to move this forward and ask your doctor to read this in part. If you think of those younger students that came to see you in the operating room before you went on maternity leave, and then, you know, the letters kept flooding in and more people wanted to come in. What needs to happen to help their lot?

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: I think we need to encourage everyone to come to the operating room, male and female. And I've already started to have talking to the undergraduate department about trying to put in talks or lectures or education or something at the medical school level to understand why there's is this hidden culture that being a surgeon and female, it might not be a good idea or this isn't a good path for you. Getting rid of that doubt so that people can come in open minded and try it, and if you like it, male or female, you can do it. And if you don't like it, there's lots of other options. But don't come in with this huge barrier already set out for you before even entering the operating room for the first time.

MG: Dr. Baxter, for you, what's the most important thing that has to happen now to move this conversation forward so we're not having the same conversation in five years time?

DR. NANCY BAXTER: Well, I think I don't agree with immersive at addressing the hidden curriculum, but I think one of the things that you could address immediately is pay equity. And I think if you if you focussed on pay equity both within surgery but within medicine in general to ensure that women's work isn't undervalued, I think there'd be a massive cultural shift because that would be a massive shift in income that would have to happen with, you know, our institutions behind us to make sure that happened. You know, I think that that would send a huge message that people are actually serious about gender equity in 2022.

MG: Dr. Kieser, last word to you. We started with you, and in many ways, your story is at the centre of this conversation.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Thank you, Matt. I think the most important is to pay it forward. Mentor every chance you get. I have high school students coming to talk to me in my office and always take the high road. Always say what you would say if the person standing in front of you was the one that was offending. You must disagree agreeably. You have to do it with charm and elegance. You don't fight evil with evil. You fight evil with good. And that is really part.

MG: This is an important conversation to have. You're all very busy as well, so I appreciate you taking some time to come and speak with us about this. Thank you very much.

DR. TERESA KIESER: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks very much for having us on.

DR. MARISA LOURIDAS: Thank you.

DR. TERESA KIESER: And thank you, Dr. Baxter and Dr. Louridas, for your kind comments. Much appreciated.

MG: Dr. Teresa Kieser is a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at the Libin Cardiovascular Institute at the University of Calgary. Dr. Nancy Baxter, a Canadian surgeon and head of Melbourne University's School of Population and Global Health. And Dr. Marisa Louridas is a colorectal surgeon at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto and assistant professor of General Surgery at the University of Toronto. You can find more on this story at cbcnews.ca. We'd love to hear from you on this as well. You can email us The Current at cbc.ca. Find us on Twitter as well. We are @TheCurrentCBC. Well, coming up after your regional update, the data has been compiled, an apology has been made. Now what? Coming up in 90 seconds, Canada's largest municipal police force and its racism problem. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We'll be right back. Stick around.

Activists call for culture change over role of racism in policing

Guests: Neil Price, El Jones, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. For many in the city of Toronto, it was an apology. That was a long time coming from the interim chief of police, James Ramer.

SOUNDCLIP

As an organisation, we have not done enough to ensure that every person in our city receives fair and unbiased policing. And for this as chief of police and on behalf of the service, I am sorry and I apologise unreservedly.

MG: That's Toronto's interim police chief, James Ramer, speaking at a media conference yesterday. Chief Ramer was addressing the city's racialized communities, especially the black and indigenous communities, after releasing new data about race and policing. The data showed the extent of systemic discrimination, for example, that almost four times black residents were almost four times as likely to face police force as their share of the population. They were 230% more likely to have a police officer point a firearm at them when they appeared to be unarmed than white people. And black and indigenous people in crisis were nearly twice as likely to face force and have force used on them. The response to the chief's apology was swift.

SOUNDCLIP

What we have asked for you to do is to stop. To stop brutalising us, to stop killing us, to stop carding us, to stop continuously stopping us and harassing your children or black children or black sons of black daughters. Chief Ramer, we do not accept your apology.

MG: That's University of Toronto. Professor Beverly Bain, also a member of the No Pride and Policing Coalition. Neil Price has been tracking police behaviour in Toronto for years. He's executive director of a non-profit consultancy group called Logical Outcomes. Neil, good morning.

NEIL PRICE: Good morning.

MG: There have been a series of reports going back decades looking at racial bias in policing in Toronto. This report came from the police itself. Was anything in the report a surprise to you?

NEIL PRICE: No, not at all. I mean, as you've said, we had reports as recent as 2018 from the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Of course, we did a study at the neighbourhood level going back to 2014 when we were looking at the issue of carding. That pretty much confirmed what the community had been saying for decades, that there was overpolicing there, that there was a rampant commitment to carding. So the report did not surprise me in the least. I think what was different is that you had the police themselves bringing the data forward. Mind you, it's really important to note, and I think this has been sometimes elided from the story, is that this was mandated. So this was not the police of their own volition and responding to the community going about this on their own. They were they were asked to do this. They were directed to this by the province and so I think that's a really important context. And I think it also speaks to why the apology has landed in such a hollow way for community members. Because what what the community is saying is that there's not a news story here and that the police have had this information for decades and have refused to really do anything meaningful to address the concerns.

MG: Do you accept the apology from the chief?

NEIL PRICE: No, I can't accept this apology because of the way it has come to us and the way that it has been presented and framed. And by that, I mean, it was really telling when you listen to Chief Raymer, the extent to which he went to pass the differences between what he was describing as systemic racism and personal or individual accountability for their actions, the actions of officers. And he even went so far as to say to his rank and file that this was an organisational shortcoming and that it didn't speak to their actions as individual police officers. And so when I saw that kind of framing of this apology, I knew it was one that could not be accepted. And I think you saw that it was widely denounced by several people. You played a clip there by Beverly Payne, who was very clear in denouncing this and has been supported.

MG: Can I just just briefly just on the systemic racism piece, because he did kind of, as you said, distinguish between systemic racism and individual behaviour of police officers saying that this wasn't about the acts of the individual and that there was no intent on the force to drill down and look at the behaviour and the actions of individual officers. What is that about, do you think?

NEIL PRICE: Well, I think it's it's really about, you know, saying that we're not really serious about this. How do you have racism without racists? How do you have a system of, you know, perpetuating these kinds of behaviours? It's individuals. You've got police officers going into communities with a particular mindset, a racist lens that does not see these encounters the same way that they may see other encounters in other parts of the city or with other people. And this mindset, this belief that these lives are not as valuable as others, maybe even their own, leads to the kinds of use of force. But the data shows and the carding and all the other things that the community has pointed out. So in my mind, and I think what you're hearing from my colleagues as well is there's there is no parsing of of the two. And if you're serious, you're going to for example, you know, the chief could have said immediately, we will be reviewing allegations of racism. We're going to go back. We're going to be in light of this data and we're going to be investigating to the point of of of firing police officers, getting them out of out of their jobs. But the big picture for me as well that I want to really stress is that the question of these encounters, we've got to get police out of these encounters. We've got to acknowledge that police are responding to situations. Mental health crisis. You mentioned some of them in your intro that they have no business in. And the research is really clear on this. 80%, 90% of what we see police officers attending to do not require use of force, do not require an officer with a sidearm. And so we got to get back to this question, the question of how do we get police out of these encounters? How do we rethink the role of community safety? How do we get out of the paradigm, the 19th century based paradigm that you need police moving going around in cruisers in communities, particularly low income communities, in order to achieve something called public safety, we got to grapple seriously with the big paradigm of policing. And until we do that, we're going to just be in this procedural sort of policy quagmire that we've been in for decades.

MG: And in the absence of that, I mean, you mentioned communities. The chief was asked whether those communities that are pinpointed in this report as being overpoliced, as being, you know, on the receiving end of disproportionate use of force, whether there was still trust in those communities and when it comes to the police. Take a listen to part of what the chief had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

There's an incredible amount of good work being done. I was up at the 31 division on Saturday for the open house there and a very, very substantial turnout from members of the community working with our neighbourhood officers and just love having those neighbouring officers in the community and working very, very well with them. So much confidence about some of the work that we were doing in the interaction and the improved interactions with police and the relationships with the police. So from my perspective, I hear a very different voice from the community and there's a lot of confidence in the work that we are doing.

MG: He mentioned 31 division that's in the northwest end of Toronto, near the intersection of Jane and Finch. He says there's still trust in the community. Just finally, what do you make of that?

NEIL PRICE: That doesn't ring true for me at all. In fact, I think it completely runs counter to the data that the chief presented. How do you have this widespread disproportionality and then say it in the same breath that you've got trust and that there's confidence? That doesn't ring true to me at all.

MG: So where does that leave that push, then, for a change in police culture, if the chief says in the face of that data coming out. Well, the community still trusts us.

NEIL PRICE: Yeah. You're going to have to ask the chief on that one. I think there's a huge gap between what the data is showing us and what the cheaters is purporting to to to, you know, describe the relationships between the community. I think what the community is saying loud and clear is until we see a meaningful change, until we see these tactics of stopping people, the raiding, the unnecessary drawing of fire, all these things that the data show until we see a cessation of these kinds of activities, all of this is just sort of bureaucratic, procedural spin. And that will be the ultimate measure. The ultimate measure will be, can young people go about their lives? Can people in these communities go about their lives and not have police be this all encompassing, terrorising presence in their lives?

MG: Neil, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

NEIL PRICE: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Neil Price, executive director of a non-profit consultancy group called Logical Outcomes. He's in Toronto. We did ask for an interview with Toronto's interim chief of police, James Ramer. He was not available. That apology by the Toronto Police is not a first in Canada. In November of 2019, the Halifax Regional Police Chief apologised to Nova Scotia's black community over street checks that practise, also known as carding, is now banned in the province. But advocates say the use of force against that community continues. El Jones is an activist and professor of Canadian and political studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, also co-author of a recent report prepared for the Halifax Police Commission called Defunding the Police Defining the Way Forward. Good morning to you.

EL JONES: Good morning, Matt.

MG: As I mentioned, the Halifax Regional Police apologised a couple of years back for street checks. What was what was behind that apology, as you understood it?

EL JONES: Yes. So that in November of 2019, the Halifax police chief gave an apology for systemic racism, but more specifically for the practise of street checks. And like all of these apologies, it was not from the goodness of the police's heart that they woke up one day and decided that they just needed to apologise. It was in response to a report that showed that black people were six times more likely than white people to be street checked or carded. And that report came after many years of activism on the part of the African Nova Scotian community to get the practise of street checks. And so, beginning with the stop of a man named Kirk Johnson, who was a world champion boxer from the black community of North Preston, in 2004, he had done a human rights complaint. But finally, a report was made in 2004. He'd been stopped over 40 times, usually for allegedly having tinted windows. And he led a human rights complaint. And as part of that report, they ordered the police to keep that. The police began keeping that data and did not do anything with it until CBC requested that that in 2017. And that's where these racial disparities in street checks became clear in terms of the data. After that, of course, as many years of pushing from the community.

MG: After that data was released, after the apology came out, what happened did did much change materially in Halifax when it comes to interactions between police and members of black communities?

EL JONES: Of course not. No one will be surprised to know that only a few weeks after that, a black man was tased on Quinte pool. In early January, a black mother named Santina Rail was beat down and arrested by police in a Walmart in front of her young children. And only a few weeks after that, a 15 year old black boy was beaten up by the Halifax police. And this, of course, shows that these incidents of force are constant and they do not change no matter how many reports or recommendations or apologies are rendered.

MG: Neil Price talked about Rethinking Policing. You co-wrote a report called Defunding the Police. It came out earlier this year. There were 36 recommendations to the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners. When we talk about defunding, what does that mean from your perspective? It's a word that people look at with all sorts of different interpretations. From your perspective, in the context of that report and in the context of what you described. What does that mean?

EL JONES: And so some people have been saying that they don't like the term defunding. They think it's unnecessarily negative. Defunding is quite simply reallocating funds from the police and putting them into organisations, communities or initiatives that are better placed and better served to actually address the problems we're trying to address. So a great example already given in the previous speaker was mental health. The police are not trained mental health workers. They do not have the ability to de-escalate those situations and there's no reason for them to be involved in those parts. So part of defunding is de tasking the police and making sure that they are not involved in these inappropriate calls. It is also, perhaps more importantly, about resourcing communities in all the ways that we need to address the actual social problems, whether that's unhoused people, whether that's mental health crisis, whether that's treating drugs not through criminalisation and stigma, but as a health issue. So the many issues that people end up policed by can be more effectively addressed by giving those funds into communities. Now, what happens when we give funds to the police? Over many, many decades, we've been defunding, if we want to put it that way. Our social services, the things that actually help people find housing or get treatment for drug addiction or help us get jobs or intervene in family violence. And we've been funding the police. And what we're seeing across Canada, a study by Kevin Warby showed that between 2007 to 2017, police have heavily militarised in Canada and we are seeing that reflected in an explosion of use of force incidents. We see the creep of weaponry and violence such as SWAT teams, as we call them in Canada, emergency response teams of expanding powers, using them, for example, to deliver simple warrants. In Halifax, very recently, the community of Union Square was extremely traumatised when executing a warrant, an armoured vehicle was rolled into the community. So we see these escalations and this happens as we give a police budget, not only of course because we give them unlimited and repeated funds essentially. So every time the police ask for more money, they get more money. Any time the police at a crisis point, they're revealed to be racial profiling. They're revealed to be engaged in brutality. They revealed to not be able to stop critical incidents and to have completely, as we've seen from the Mass Casualty Commission, being unable to respond in any appropriate way when any time. But we find that the police have made a mistake on their job or can't do their job or are caught in violating human rights. They are given more money and we say they need more training, we need more officers, we need to do these hires, and then they use that money to bring that force down again and again on black, indigenous and racialized communities. So if we want to stop them from doing this, if we want to constrain the use of force, it is not an apology that is going to do that. It is stopping giving them the tools to do that, and even more importantly, making sure our communities have the tools to actually deal with that trauma and to actually solve the social issues that the police are not equipped to address. One.

MG: Just finally, before I let you go, is this moment different? We talked about the number of reports that have come out in Toronto. There have been reports, as you mentioned, in Halifax, right across this country looking at police culture, police use of force and looking to try to change that. Is this moment different, do you think?

EL JONES: Oh, I don't think it's different at all. And in fact, what we show, for example, is when the police chief, Anderson, did a study, a psychologist that showed when the police received more use of force training, they actually use force more because they perceive risk more. So, in fact, many of the remedies that are given actually continue to contribute to police powers. So this moment isn't different. The community has been talking for decades about things like black women being strip searched in public. We know from many reports and from the testimony of black people over decades, testimony that black people have experienced violence in order to deliver through protests, through being arrested, through being stigmatised. This information is not new, as your previous speaker said as well. So nothing is going to change in this moment if we do not actually change the way that the police are given money, the way the police are allowed to act on accountably, the way that police boards hold the police accountable, because, you know, there's a complete failure in police accountability mechanisms, whether that's police governance, whether that's things like the SIU that rarely do their job to actually charge the police to hold them accountable. The police commit violence. And we don't even know which officer's response when they return to the job and repeated use of force. And this report doesn't even begin to say that it does. It, in fact, says explicitly that they will not use this to track individual officers and hold them accountable. So with no police accountability, including and of course, the municipalities that continue to give them every piece of money that they ask for, how do we expect change? So what we will see is instead of preventing any more apologies, instead of stopping the behaviour, we'll just get another report and another unsolicited apology and more money and then another report, another unsolicited apology and so forth. Because we are not changing the underlying issues and we are not changing what is the status quo of policing? What? Is this violence against black indigenous racialized drug using unhoused queer and trans people and sex working communities. Everyone who's considered to not exist in this idea of public safety.

MG: El Jones, thank you very much.

EL JONES: Thank you very much.

MG: El Jones, poet, activist and professor of Political and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah has been researching racism in policing and stop and search practises in Canada for more than a decade. He is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, special advisor to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a quasi. Good morning to you.

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: Morning, Matt.

MG: Is this moment different? This data comes from the Toronto police. It confirms what you and other researchers have known for years, what people, as L said in communities have been talking about for decades, the fact that it comes out of the police service itself. Does that make any difference?

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: It doesn't make much difference. Mean that as Neil and as all have quite eloquently said, there's nothing new in this supposed news. Right. You've mentioned the task force going back, you know, following shootings and deaths of black men in the 1970s and 1980s, work of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Academics like myself and the important work that activists have been doing. So there is nothing new here in terms of what we're seeing in the data. All I would say is different is the approach that the police themselves are taking to try to manage the issue at hand.

MG: What are the sorts of data would you like to see collected and released to the public, not just in Toronto, but across the country when it comes to how police interact with communities.

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: So, you know, here we're talking about data out use of force and strip searches. Five years ago, we were talking about data related to carding, which was a pretty specific police kind of stop and document practise. In 2002, of the Toronto Star published its first series, Looking at Traffic Stops. What I would like to see is data on the whole scope of police activities from stop, question and search. Right through to the disposition of cases. So actually after the police have handed off their charges to the crown so that we have an understanding of the full scope of policing activities and how they impact marginalised and oppressed groups.

MG: The chief yesterday in Toronto talked about systemic racism, then did not say, you know, that this is involving an individual. Officers talked about it being a larger issue. This has been difficult for forces across the country to acknowledge whether it's the RCMP or municipal forces. What does it mean if a force acknowledges that there is a systemic problem within that force itself?

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: I think, as has been said this morning, already acknowledging systemic racism without taking into account the behaviour and actions of individuals is completely meaningless. And I think it's important to put Chief Ramer's attention to systemic racism in the context of previous chiefs. So, you know, Fantino, when presented with data on race and stop, said that there was no problem. Bill Blair came in and one of the first things he admitted was that, you know, racial profiling and racism was a problem within policing. He's, you know, kept saying that we are from the human race but focussed so much attention on implicit bias and so implicit or unconscious biases, taking the responsibility again away from the individuals and the institution itself. And now we're once again seeing, you know, this attention to systemic racism and systemic bias without actually thinking about the people who are responsible for the actions. And I think this is a major shortcoming of the Toronto Police Service Board policy and something that, you know, Ontarians and people across the country should pay attention to as because we have, you know, a national data collection strategy in the works with the chiefs of Police and Statistics Canada, we have provincial mandate to collect specific data. If this information is not going to be used to identify specific individuals and and units, what uses it. The policy explicitly states that the data will not be used and the strategy will not be used to identify the actions of individual officers and therefore cannot be used for corrective and disciplinary measures. And there are supposed to be other early warning systems in place. But in what kind of world would we collect data on the potentially troubling behaviours of individuals and not use that data, that information to identify and to correct and to discipline the behaviour of those individuals.

MG: Can you change your culture? Is it possible to change a culture when you're looking at police who we just spent an hour talking about culture change within medicine, we've been talking about culture change within the military. Is it possible to change the culture of policing?

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: I think it is possible to change the culture of policing. I'll go back to what El and Neil have both said. In order to change the culture of policing, we as a society, they'll also need to change what it is that we want the police to do. And so while we still have the police focussing so broadly on a host of social problems, but doing so from an enforcement oriented standpoint, we're going to continue to see the issues that we do. And ultimately, this is a problem of the role and function of police in our society. Right. The police have been given way too much scope to deal with a host of social problems. And until we scale the work that they do back, we are going to continue to see these issues manifest in the way that they have and were reported on yesterday.

MG: How do you go about doing that? I mean, who are changemakers welcome within police forces that would want to change the culture, that would want to perhaps start to re-evaluate the role of policing in some of the situations that El and Neil raised.

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: I would say that they are overly welcome. We can look at, you know, Peter slowly as someone who acknowledged the need for policing the change and who's had a very difficult time as a leader and now two different police agencies. I think first and foremost, you know, this recognition needs to come from the public and from politicians. We have a new police act here in Ontario, but it is yet to come into force. We should, as a society, be having conversations about the role and function of the police. We have an institution here that's now a couple of hundred years old who has continued to have responsibilities piled on it without a genuine assessment of what that work is. And so, yes, I think we can change culture from the inside. But importantly, again, we need to change the scope and the nature of what we're asking police to do in order for that culture change to happen. And then we also need to look at the structures that are in place. So we've already heard about police associations, and I think they're an important factor in stymieing or slowing the pace of cultural change. We need to strengthen our oversight or accountability mechanisms undoubtably, and we need to look and this is pertinent for people in Toronto at what the leadership looks like, right? And what the leadership is actually saying and the message that they're sending throughout the organisation. The messages that we've got from past chiefs in the city have not been one that would be amenable or malleable to cultural change and that needs to change.

MG: Again, this is a national issue, we're focussing on the data that came out of Toronto, but this is a conversation that's happening right across the country and in many parts of the world as well. How much introspection do you think is going on amongst the rank and file officers about what this data has said and what this conversation is is suggesting?

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: I would hope more than I probably perceive to be happening. I think we need to recognise that, you know, as in in any institution, the police workforce is diverse. And so you've got people who've been in policing now for decades who have perhaps they're in a rather entrenched and maybe close minded view of policing. You might have new recruits that share those mindsets, and then you have people. And in a city like Toronto, there have been active efforts to recruit from across, you know, racial, ethnic, cultural lines, but importantly for experience. And I think, you know, one of the key things for me, beyond thinking about what it is that we have the police do in curtailing or reining in the scope of police work, is thinking about who we hire, not only what they look like, but the life experiences that they've had. We've heard already that police training is an is of limited utility and might actually be at times counterproductive. You can't train a broad and inclusive worldview into an individual that comes from life experience. And one of the problems with policing is because police focus on such negative aspects of what happened in our society. They come to see the world through those lenses. And so if we hire people who are older, who have greater life experience, who have seen and worked in different fields, I think that'll assist with this this cultural change that we've talked about for so long.

MG: Just before I let you go, just a few seconds left. Is this a moment for change, do you think, or will we have the same conversation again in five years time?

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: I think when the Toronto police, at least the next round of data from their phased in approach to data collection, analysis and release, we will be having a similar conversation just as I had, you know, five years ago around carding, just as we had you and I met ten years ago around the suppression of this very data. Unfortunately, as someone who's now extending on 20 years of doing this work, I sound like a broken record. I sound like a broken record across.

MG: Akwasi, it's good to speak with you again. Thank you very much.

AKWASI OWUSU-BEMPAH: My pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. He researches police and racism in Canada. Well, that is the current for this Thursday. q is up next on CBC Radio One, Tom Power speaking with a Canadian music legend, Mr. Rufus Wainwright, talking about Judy Garland and more. That's coming up in just a moment. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk again tomorrow.

The Current Transcript for June 16, 2022

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Thursday June 16, 2022 Full Transcript

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