Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for March 9, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] We are here to provide security because they are using people as suicide bombers to attack local markets and create chaos.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: And some of the people they use in those attacks are children. That is the reality in Mali right now where UN peacekeepers like the one you just heard have been based for the past four years. Separately, French troops control an even wider area of the Sahel region of Africa and Canada is already providing air support for that. And now as Canada considers joining the UN mission, military experts are advising caution because of the moral quandary faced by confronting child soldiers and because some say there's simply no peace to keep. We're talking about the difficulties and the dilemma in an hour. Also today, the racism Canada prefers to ignore.

SOUNDCLIP

We focus on what happens in the United States and then say thank goodness it's not as bad here. It allows us to say as long as we're not as bad as them, we never have to talk about what happens in our own country.

AMT: Journalist Desmond Cole says it's time to stop pointing over the border and look inward, where Canada is on track record on anti-black racism is disturbing, longstanding and ubiquitous. Hear him in half an hour. And—

SOUNDCLIP

Why on earth was this nuclear power that build on the sea coast and based on a prediction that a tsunami would not exceed 10 metres? It's something that I think is unacceptable.

AMT: Six years after a massive earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami and created a nuclear meltdown, Japan faces more questions and more consequences. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Fukushima: 6 years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster

Guests: Dr. Brian Goldman

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] I think it was just after 2 p.m. when I intended to go out. There was a strong earthquake. I was in my home with my daughter. All kinds of things started falling over. I thought it might be over soon but it kept going for many minutes. Then I heard the roof tiles clanking and it was so much damage. The roof tiles kept clanking as they flew off.

AMT: That is Ryoji Okoshi, a 70-year-old farmer recalling the day nearly six years ago that a massive earthquake rocked Japan. It was March of 2011. The 9.0 magnitude quake was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, the fourth largest in the world. And the quake triggered a massive tsunami across Fukushima prefecture, home of the Daiichi nuclear power plant.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Groaning and yelling]

VOICE 1: Washing away entire villages, cities and more than 20,000 people.

VOICE 2: It looks like the tsunami has engulfed several cities.

VOICE 1: But further south at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, an even more deadly problem was unfolding. There, four of the six nuclear reactors were overwhelmed by tsunami waves knocking out their power supply. It created the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

AMT: Dr. Brian Goldman is the host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art. He has just returned from Fukushima where he spoke with Mr. Okoshi and other residents. He was there to find out what life has been like in the years after the tsunami and the nuclear meltdown. Dr. Brian Goldman is with me in our studio. Hi.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: What was it like to be there in Fukushima?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well, passing through the region—and we're talking about a region—you get the sense that life in Fukushima and surrounding areas has arrived at a new normal. It's not quite back to the way it was before the tsunami. Along the coast, in some places you see these 10-metre high walls that are designed to block the next tsunami. In some places they've actually raised the land beside the ocean. In some places I saw many houses that were abandoned with very few shopkeepers and service and services available to people who've decided to come back or have stayed. I saw many dump sites containing bags upon bags of contaminated soil in dark green bags and then green tarp over them. And the farther you go from the current and former evacuation zones, the closer life is to normal. You know people are working and farming. Kids are going to school. Closer to the reactor, to the crippled reactor, now shut down reactor, there are 1,200 TEPCO staff. That's the Tokyo Electric Power Company. They are supervising several thousand contract workers who are supervising the cleanup of the reactor. The workers live in temporary barracks and just for some round numbers, 100,000 in the region were originally evacuated in an area that's 1,100 square kilometres. And now town by town as they decontaminate the soil, they are lifting evacuation orders.

AMT: How worried are people about radiation in that area?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well, that depends on where you live and how you've been affected. There's also what people say and what people do. You know for instance, you pass through towns like Naraha which is 20 kilometres from the power plant. The evacuation order was lifted in September 2015—18 months ago—yet just a handful of people have returned. That tells you they're concerned. Like many places I visited, Naraha is near a large dump site containing bags of radiation contaminated soil covered in tarps. It's just there and there's no timetable to remove it. There are radiation metres everywhere—these big electronic metres. You know they’re large cylindrical metres. They have like a digital reading at the top. On the one hand, the radiation levels are low, very low. On the other hand, the very presence of radiation metres tells you that they're concerned about it and it's a constant visual reminder. And remember of course, that radiation is invisible.

AMT: Yeah. So overall, how is the health of the people around here?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well, local health care workers who I talked to, who were on the ground in the region say that they've seen increased rates of heart disease, you know stress, mental health issues. It's all anecdotal stuff. It's very hard to say whether it's due to the disaster, the evacuation or the economic impact. There is a stigma to being in this area or from the area, for instance following the disaster, the government banned produce from the area around the reactor site to reduce radioactive activity entering the food supply. And of course, you know the thing that everybody talks about is cancer. There's the risk of cancer and authorities are definitely dealing with a significant increase in reported rates of certain kinds of cancer. We heard from Ryoji Okoshi off the top. He's a 70-year-old part-time farmer. During his working life, he was a writer, a technical journalist and he comes from an area 70 kilometres away from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

AMT: And what was he ever told to evacuate that area, that farm?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: No. He was not told to evacuate. He was not thought to be living in a danger zone and so he was neither ordered nor advised to evacuate. You know on the contrary, he was told things were okay where he lives. So he carried on with his life eating rice, you know growing his own food, living off the land as a part-time farmer, growing of his own food, what a lot of people do. He remembers a couple of months following the disaster, hiking in the mountains and drinking water from a natural stream.

AMT: So he had no reason to think he might be in danger.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: He didn't. But then he started having regular checkups and I'll let Ryoji pick up the story.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator]

In 2014, when I had my regular medical exam, thyroid tests weren't included but the physician at Fukushima collaborative clinic was very concerned about radiation and decided to include thyroid tests. So I had it done and a 10-millimetre nodule was found. That was October and in January, it was still being monitored and hadn't gotten any larger so they thought it might be okay. At that time, another person found an enlarged pancreatic duct. I’ve come to terms with that and started calculating my life at that time.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: So an enlarged pancreatic duct is kind of code for saying maybe he's got something blocking the way like a pancreatic cancer. So he went through the full workup—CT scans, MRI—it turned out he didn't have cancer of the pancreas and didn't need surgery for that. But you can see this fear that something imminent, something’s growing inside me and it turned out he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And according to Canadian Cancer Society figures, this year 6,800 Canadians will be diagnosed with thyroid cancer, 210 will die of it. The incidence is greater in women but the death rate is higher in men and that's the usual incidence. Radiation exposure though, can lead to thyroid cancer.

AMT: So how does he feel about this diagnosis?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well, when I spoke to him, he said he felt both angry and sad. He's an intelligent guy who feels that if he paid a lot of attention to this beforehand or earlier in the process, he might have turned out differently. Most of all, he said that he and his family had been let down by the very people in authority that he always believed were there to protect them.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator]

I reflect a lot. I didn't run after the tsunami and I had little fear of the nuclear power plant. What troubled me was that during construction of the power plant, there was numerous oversights putting the auxiliary power supplies seaward, installing machines imported from the US as is. This was utter nonsense. So why on earth was this nuclear power built on the sea coast in this day and age of technical advancements? And based on a prediction that a tsunami would not exceed 10 metres? This truly ignored the human factor. It's something that I think is unacceptable. And how to dispose of the waste has yet to be decided. I am angry. I'd be glad if my thyroid cancer was the end of the effects of radioactivity. But that's not the case. I have five grandchildren. The oldest is 15. One is two. When we look at our grandchildren's faces, we all think about a future. What kind of crime was this?

AMT: Brian, he's talking about government accountability there.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes, he is. And you know thinking through what could go wrong and how are we going to deal with that, prevent it, mitigate damage. It's not as if quakes and tsunamis are unheard of in Japan. It has a long history of dealing with both of those natural disasters, knowing the risk that comes from these kinds of coastal events and what to do to prevent them or mitigate the damage. He also feels that the full extent of the radiation exposure has been soft pedalled to the public and he's making the point that others have made, that it's not just about where you were at the moment of the tsunami but what you did afterwards. Were you in the path of the plume, the radioactive cloud and each of these could have long-term effects on your health. And he says that was never made clear to him and to others in the region.

AMT: So is there any recourse? Could he be compensated by the government for this cancer?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Ryoji says that he has very little recourse. And part of the reason is that if you have a very strict prove-it attitude, it's very difficult to prove on a case-by-case basis that this 70-year-old man's thyroid cancer—thyroid cancer tends to occur more often in older people—to prove that his cancer was caused by exposure to radiation. He says though that some of the doctors that he's seen at the local hospital have gone out of their way to tell him that he had no significant radiation exposure. And according to Ryoji, one doctor he spoke to didn't even wait for Ryoji to tell his story. To paraphrase, the doctor said to him, if you're going to tell me you're exposed to radiation, forget it. And the government he says has taken the same stance.

AMT: Wow. Okay. Well, he mentions his grandchildren. We know these types of nuclear disasters have generational effects. We saw what happened in Chernobyl.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Exactly. The tragic aftermath from Chernobyl affected generations and continues to have ripple effects. A large increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer occurred among people, particularly young children and adolescents who were at a young age, under the age of 18 at the time of the accident and lived in the most contaminated areas of places like Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Recent investigations have seen a doubling of the incidence of leukemia among those most highly exposed by radiation from Chernobyl. There have been reports of increased birth malformations in Belarus. But there's this reporter bias, the fact that when you start looking for something you notice it. So it's uncertain how much of an increase in malformations has ensued.

AMT: So what do we know about children and exposure to radiation from the disaster in Japan?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: I saw charts from the government of the Fukushima Prefecture that show a 50-fold increase in thyroid cancer in kids under the age of 18. That's compared to pre-2011, pre the tsunami. That number obviously is astonishingly high. Radiation exposure is a proven risk factor for thyroid cancer. People old enough will remember that during the 1960s, before the 1960s that is, there were kids who were sometimes treated with doses of radiation to the head and neck for acne, fungal infections of the scalp, ringworm, enlarged tonsils or adenoids and it was only years later the people who had these treatments were found to have a higher risk of thyroid cancer. The risk may be caused by exposure to one or another form of radioactive iodine which is taken up by the thyroid gland. There’s a lot of conjecture about that.

AMT: So was it difficult to get information in Japan on this?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes and no. I met up with a nuclear activist named Hideyuki Ban. He's the secretary general of the CNIC, which is the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre. This is a non-profit agency whose mission is definitely anti-nuclear, yet strives to provide unbiased information about the risks of nuclear power. I met up with him in Tokyo. He's been tracking government figures on cancer rates in kids and you know he told me that there's a certain climate in Japan where there's gathering the statistics and there’s sharing them with the public. And sharing them with the public seems to be a political act. Still he wanted to get the information out.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator]

I'm about to get into a political discussion but at Fukushima Medical University, a family group was formed within the prefectural medical school with sick kids. This is not public knowledge. Also, a citizen group has created a fund for children with thyroid cancer. The state that the children are in is very harsh and those in the prefectural medical university work to keep some of that information from getting out. That is compounding the suffering of these kids.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: So Anna Maria, what he's talking about is—and I'm quite familiar with this when it comes to medical errors—there's two harms. The first harm is the error itself and the damage caused by that. The second one is not acknowledging it, kind of proclaiming it and saying yes, you were damaged by this and that's what he's talking about. And that's part of not telling the public what has actually happened to the health of these kids.

AMT: So they're hiding some stuff.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes.

AMT: Are the children getting treatment?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Again, it's a yes and no. Medical treatment for thyroid cancer is covered by public health insurance. But the parents still have to pay quite large sums of money for various stages of treatment, so 10,000 Japanese yen, $115 Canadian per examination by a doctor. And then if the child has surgery, either a 150,000 yen which is $7,500 Canadian for surgical treatment but double that—$3,400 dollars Canadian equivalent—if the surgery is done endoscopically with a little keyhole camera surgery. And as Ban mentioned, a group named 3/11 Children's Fund for Thyroid Cancer has been launched to provide financial support to children with thyroid cancer and their parents to cover the cost of some of the out-of-pocket medical bills. The aim of this group is to raise enough money to provide 50,000 yen—that's $590—to between 200 and 400 families. That's clearly not going to cover the kids who need surgery.

AMT: So you're outlining real physical issues arising from the Fukushima disaster. And then of course there's the mental health issue. How are people coping?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: That is another big problem, perhaps even a larger problem. There's been an increase in mental health issues due primarily to stress from many causes—dislocation of families, loss of social support, economic hardship. I paid a visit to the one psychiatric hospital in the region that stayed open during the entire crisis other than a day or two. It's called the Takano Hospital. It's located in Hirono which is 22 kilometres from the power plant. The doctor who ran it was the late Dr. Hideo Takano, a psychiatrist who garnered a reputation as a mythic figure just for keeping the place open. I spoke to his daughter Mio Takano, who's a social worker by training, who's currently running the hospital today. Dr. Takano, the man who kept it open just died tragically in December, the result of a fire. He was 78 years old. Imagine, he was working in his retired years and he died in that way and his daughter has taken over as administrator. And it's really important for Mio, the daughter, to honour her father and to continue his mission. This is all part of a culture-wide sense of duty. She told me why the staff chose to stay at the hospital in the days after the plant was compromised.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator]

There were patients at this time in the nineties and some were even 100 years old. The head doctor called those patients’ will to live a “vital feeling.” He felt that if he left his patients, they would lose that. The head doctor had been living here since 1980, so he understood the flow of wind around the hospital. The head doctor, based on intuition of having lived there for many years and having borrowed a Geiger counter, took measurements and found that the radiation level was not that high. But he wasn't the only person who stayed behind. Some nurses and other staff that shared his feelings volunteered to stay because he was staying and there were patients to care for. In total including myself and the head physician, there were as few as 13 nursing 100 patients.

AMT: Brian, so brave and caring of them all.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yeah, think about it. They were in the direct path of the tsunami. They were just off the ocean. There were lots of unknowns in the early days and now they're dealing with even more mental health patients. As a private hospital, the Takano doesn't qualify for the same level of government support as other hospitals, so they've had to cobble together finances to stay open. And one of the other things that Mio Takano told me is that they are witnessing an increase in suicides in the region.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator]

We started doing post-mortem examinations at the hospital. Once a month, post-mortems would be conducted for the police. In 2015, there were 11 cases and six of those were suicides. That isn’t typical. Most cases where people who returned to their homes with permission to enter the danger zone and hanged themselves in their sheds and garages. I think that was entirely because of the earthquake.

AMT: Really Brian, so many people's lives have been upended.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Yes, they have and they hold the government to account. And we did make efforts to approach the prefectural government. They cited time constraints. They said they weren't prepared to respond to our questions on short notice. But the thing to understand is that Japanese politicians do recognize that at least Fukushima is done. There are still 42 commercially available nuclear reactors—three of them are back online—so they haven't given up on nuclear power entirely. And you know nuclear power was promoted as safe energy. But you know we had Chernobyl, 25 years later we have Fukushima. It's a small sample size but certainly people who are watching this think that there's going to be one disaster every 25 years and for some, the question is which one might be next and why?

AMT: And of course, they want more accountability as they go forward.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Absolutely.

AMT: Thank you, Brian Goldman.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: My pleasure.

AMT: Brian Goldman, host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art travelled to Fukushima, Japan. We will have pictures of that trip up on our website. You can see those fields of waste that he talks about on the website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. The news is next and then—

SOUNDCLIP

There is no domain in Canadian life that racism and anti-black racism doesn't exist.

AMT: That is journalist Desmond Cole. He's here to talk about a new CBC Television documentary, The Skin We’re In. He'll be here in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Yes, Canada, anti-black racism lives here: journalist Desmond Cole

Guests: Desmond Cole

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, any peacekeeping mission comes with risk and as Canadian officials ponder a mission to Mali, there's an especially troubling risk to be considered. Combatants in that country have been using child soldiers. That means Canadian forces might have to fight them, perhaps lethally. So we're asking how much of this should weigh on a peacekeeping mission decision and how to engage with the children of war. That's in half an hour. But first, speaking up about a difficult subject that many in Canada would rather not confront—anti-black racism and the skin we're in.

SOUNDCLIP

Oh, my brother. You’re almost finished, man. I’m just trying to give you the tightest line up known to man without breaking your skin. Make sure when the world goes out, you know, the paparazzi can’t get enough of you.

AMT: Well, the celebrity getting his haircut in a downtown Toronto barbershop is Desmond Cole, a prominent freelance writer and activist. Desmond Cole’s journalism—especially on the topic of being black in Canada—has been known to get the whole city talking and to land him on television.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I appreciate it though.

VOICE 2: I appreciate you, Desmond. All the times I see you on television, I feel proud, man. Proud to see a young black man, you know what I mean, voicing himself for the community who have yet to found a voice.

AMT: That is a scene from a new documentary airing on CBC Television tonight. It follows Desmond Cole as he traces the story of anti-black racism in Canada. The documentary is called The Skin We’re In. Desmond Cole is with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

DESMOND COLE: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: What's it like for you to have the man who cuts your hair tell you how proud he is to have you using your voice?

DESMOND COLE: It means a whole lot to me because the work that I'm doing is primarily for our community. You know it's for our black communities, I guess I should say, across the country. So when I get to meet people who have read something that I've done or who experience my work and who are grateful for it who are black, that really does mean everything to me because I know that they understand why we need to talk about these issues. It resonates for them without us having to have any prior conversation.

AMT: The film is about anti-black racism in Canada and it's important for you to define it as anti-black racism. We are not talking general racism. Why is that?

DESMOND COLE: Because racism doesn't affect everyone in the same way. Right? I always think for example of the term anti-semitism, which everybody understands is racism but is a specific kind of racism that affects Jewish people in specific ways. Anti-black racism is denoting the same thing. It’s saying that racism is happening to black people in this country and all over the world in specific ways, in specific contexts with a specific history behind it. So you can't just say racism to cover all forms of discrimination. It happens to different people differently and in my case, I feel like we need to talk specifically about anti-black racism because it's showing up in very specific ways in our country and we won't deal with it by blending it in with everything else that’s happening.

AMT: Until we label it, we can’t actually pinpoint and deal with it.

DESMOND COLE: Well, yeah. I mean for example, the classic stories that we hear about black women and men being followed in stores when they shop, this is something that's very specific to us as black people. But it plays into a larger idea of anti-blackness that says that our bodies are a danger that always needs to be contained. Wherever we're going, we need to be scrutinized by security or police even if we're just shopping in the store because we might get out of hand. So that is a specific feature of anti-black racism that manifests itself in the world in specific ways. That's why it's important to know these things.

AMT: And we are talking about Canada. But you go to Ferguson, Missouri because Ferguson really resonates with you. Why is that place and what happened there so important to you?

DESMOND COLE: Well, as everyone will remember, in 2014 a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri named Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown, an unarmed 18 year old who was on the side of the street. And this was after Trayvon Martin had been killed in the United States and after the Black Lives Matter movement had started. And Mike Brown's killing really triggered something in that town. Ordinary people who had never been to a protest before, who had never really been out in the street were furious at the lack of justice for Mike Brown and they started protesting for days and then for weeks and then for months continuously. And I was captivated by this from Canada. And when they decided not to charge the officer, to charge Darren Wilson, I thought I have to go down because there was big protests happening. The National Guard had been called in to that scene. While I was in Ferguson, I saw a protest in Toronto—3,000 strong for Mike Brown—and I saw that just like how it was resonating for me what had happened to him and how people were fighting back, I saw that it was resonating in my own country by the thousands. But I also saw that the reason there were 3,000 people at that protest in part was because of stories here that were similar to what was happening with Mike Brown.

AMT: Except they weren't getting the attention.

DESMOND COLE: Not at all. So for example, we had Jermaine Carby who was in Peel Region and who was shot and killed by a police officer. The police said that Jermaine Carby had a knife on him but the SIU didn't find a knife at the scene of his crime or where he was murdered by the police. So I mean we had that happening here and we were talking about Mike Brown. So it really inspired me to say people want to talk about these issues and I have to bring my work back home to make sure I'm focusing on those issues where I live and not just talking about Ferguson, not just talking about the United States.

AMT: How do you think violence against black people in the US does shape the conversation in Canada?

DESMOND COLE: I think that to paraphrase Rinaldo Walcott—a professor here in Toronto—that what happens there amplifies what happens here. What I notice is that there is often an attempt to make what happens in the United States the whole story. A black person talks about an experience of anti-black racism here in their city or in their country and immediately someone turns to them and says well, it's not as bad as the United States. That is the most demeaning, disrespectful answer you can give somebody who's talking about their experience of racism where they live. It's to tell them that they shouldn't worry because it's probably worse somewhere else. We don't live in that somewhere else. We live in Canada and we have our own distinct history of anti-black racism that needs to be tackled here.

AMT: And also when things happen, they don't always make the news across the country the way everybody picks up on something happening in the United States.

DESMOND COLE: So just this week for example, we got news that a police officer named Daniel Montsion in Ottawa would be charged in the death of Abdirahman Abdi, a 37-year-old man who was beaten to death by Montsion and other police in Ottawa. That should have been a national story but it wasn't. The fact that the police in daylight could chase a man through the streets and beat him in front of his own apartment building and he died there. Why? I mean we show clips of this happening to men in the United States. When it happens in front of us in our own country, we don't. And I think that that's that classic Canadian dodge. It's newsworthy somewhere else but if it happens here, maybe there was a reason, maybe we should wait and see. Suddenly all those same racist excuses for violence, we see that we're using them as Canadians as well.

AMT: How much of that is the media not picking up on something that then people read about and get outraged and take to the streets? And how much of that is—should Canadians be taking to the streets more?

DESMOND COLE: How can they take to the streets if they don't even know it's happening? If we're not providing the coverage, how can people be aware of the scale of the problem? I think that this is exactly like collecting statistics about anti-black racism and how it's happening in our schools, how it's happening in our public services, how it's happening across the board because we often don't have statistics for things in Canada about black people. And we say well, they are only three per cent of the population. We have all these excuses again. But how are you going to know if you don't actually keep numbers and detailed statistics? You can't do it. So if we want to be curious about this stuff, then we actually have to share the information with people. We can’t expect there to be some uprising against racism that's not being called out.

AMT: And I guess along with that comes then the accountability of journalism having to then go to people who are elected to say why, and continue the accountability questions.

DESMOND COLE: And if I may, Anna Maria, because I'm glad we're having this kind of conversation about this. Our media itself is uncomfortable with dealing with the issue of anti-black racism and just capturing it and documenting it the way that we do about other things. So let me give a really simple example. There is a situation here with a school board trustee recently in York Region. This school board trustee back in November was at a public meeting. There was a black parent at this public meeting and the school board trustee called that black parent the N-word, called that black parent that word in plain sight and hearing of other people, and then denied it, refused to step down from her elected position for months. The number of times that I saw the word “allegedly” in stories about her calling a woman the N-word—but it wasn't alleged. She acknowledged that she said it. She apologized for it. But our media to say allegedly because it was as if—well, we have to leave some room that maybe the black person is making it up. We have to leave some room that maybe this is all a misunderstanding. Hey, maybe the N-word just slipped out innocently. These are all things that not only does the general public accept but even our media accepts things like that. So it's really hard to have these conversations because even the reporting on it is always trying to give racism the benefit of the doubt.

AMT: You make the point that Canada has—I don't want to say the word storied—Canada has a long history of this and you go to Nova Scotia specifically to look at this. Where did you go? What did you find?

DESMOND COLE: Oh, we went so many places. We went to Halifax and we were in Africville.

AMT: Which is no longer exists.

DESMOND COLE: Which no longer exists.

AMT: Which was bulldozed out of existence.

DESMOND COLE: It is and it's a place where black people lived in really poor conditions to begin with. But then it was bulldozed to the ground after being left in squalor and now it's a dog park. So now a place that was a historically black town was bulldozed so that wealthy people can walk their dogs on the same property. There's one man who's a holdout who's been protesting literally for a couple of decades now outside of Africville in a trailer. He's still there. We went and met with him. We went to Birchtown, a very, very important historical site in Canada where about 1,500 black loyalists settled in what is now Nova Scotia in the late 1700s. And there was a race riot there because white people in Nova Scotia didn't want 1,500 black people settling in their area. So we went there. We went to North Preston which is a historically black area as well and talked to the very small but almost completely black community there about how the police will set up roadblocks and there's one road into the town. So the police will set up roadblocks as if it's normal that every day when people come home, they have to go through a police roadblock to be asked how are you doing today? Where are you going? Who's in the car with you? In their own community because it's a mostly black community policed by mostly white officers. So Halifax—

AMT: That’s extraordinary. Is there another city in Canada, is there another community in Canada that has checkpoints?

DESMOND COLE: Well, but this is when we talk about things like carding for example, that happens across our country. This is what's happening to black people, is that anywhere we go, we’re finding that the police always seem to have an excuse to stop us and ask us what our business is. Why is this historically important, Anna Maria? Because in the 1780s in Nova Scotia when black loyalists who had fought with the British and were promised freedom in this land, when they came up here, slavery was still legal on this land. Slavery was not abolished across the British colonies until 1833. So we're talking about 50 years of black people being here in mass numbers while slavery still exists, while people all around them are enslaved on what’s now Canadian soil.

AMT: This also has a connection to your own family history, does it not? In Birchtown.

DESMOND COLE: It does. So just to quickly tie up what I was saying though, if you can be a black person here and there's black people who are enslaved, you can never really walk free because everywhere you walk, somebody is going to be looking at you being like is that somebody's property? I've got to get that person back to their property. I've got to call the authorities. So when we as black people get stopped today, it's that same legacy of enslavement that says whenever you see a black person walking out free, you'd better check on them.

AMT: You’d better check. Yeah. Yeah.

DESMOND COLE: That's the legacy.

AMT: Well and again, a reminder that slavery existed in Canada as well.

DESMOND COLE: So I like to tell the story of James McGill after whom the University of McGill in Montreal is named. James McGill enslaved to six people including two black people. One of the black women that James McGill enslaved has his name. So the historical records have this woman's last name as McGill because she was his property. So people need to understand that the guy who built that massive university empire and has a statue outside of him now in Montreal—that guy's an enslaver and we're honouring him just in the same way that we have Langevin Block in Ottawa which is named after one of the chief supporters of residential schools. We honour people in this country who engaged in slavery, who used colonialism to decimate Indigenous people. And we don't want to talk about our own history and that was really a big part for me in wanting to make this documentary, is to say when we have to focus on Canada without relation to anybody else, it's sobering. It teaches us a lot about our history and a lot about why we're having the situations we're having today.

AMT: And this is about institutional racism and for you to just say those two things, most of us, many people—that's the first time they've just heard what you've just said about those names.

DESMOND COLE: I had to learn that information for myself because we didn't learn about things like Birchtown in school and this is where my family comes in because people who came to places like Birchtown in Nova Scotia who were black and who were promised freedom and didn't get it, well, they were getting really upset. So the British created this colony, this new place called Freetown in West Africa and they said we're going to send a whole bunch of these angry disaffected black people back to Africa because we're scared that they're going to revolt on our own soil. So this place Freetown on the coast of West Africa where a whole bunch of people who were enslaved got to return to is where my parents were born and is where my family ancestry and lineage is directly from. And so my parents returning here in the seventies—I say returning now because it's very possible, it's likely I would say in fact, that my ancestry has already taken this tour one time, if you understand what I mean. We were enslaved in some part of North America and got free by going through Birchtown in Nova Scotia and going to Freetown where my parents were born. It would have been really cool to learn this as a Canadian who was born in Red Deer, Alberta and grew up with Sierra Leonean ancestry. I would have loved to know that. And I think our country knowing these things is also very important. But I had to find that information for myself and again, that's the joy of making a movie like this.

AMT: I'm going to play a clip and a warning: there's offensive language in this tape. They use the N-word in this tape. And we're playing it because it's archival footage from a TV interview with people on the streets of Halifax. It's actually from 1962. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Is there a colour bar, a negro problem in Halifax? Does the coloured man get a fair shake?

VOICE 2: I think so. You don't hear or tell them being molested or anything like in the States or anything.

VOICE 3: We're in a white country predominantly and anything different is something different.

VOICE 1: Do you think the negro people get an even break?

VOICE 4: Yes.

VOICE 1: No discrimination?

VOICE 4: No discrimination. A few years back, there was discrimination.

VOICE 1: Have you ever tried to go to a white barber?

VOICE 5: Um…

VOICE 1: If you're happy with your n***** bars, you don't need to go to a white barber, I suppose.

VOICE 5: Well, it’s negro. It’s not n*****.

VOICE 1: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say n*****.

AMT: I don't even know what to say after that clip. That's the reporter who used that word.

DESMOND COLE: That’s right. And was corrected. And what was the first thing he said when he was corrected? He said, “I didn’t mean to use that word.” So the black person that he's interviewing on the street has to endure the pain of having that word said to them by a person in the street who's supposed to be interviewing them and is immediately told well, get over it. I didn't mean to say that. Nothing has changed. That clip’s from what, 55 years ago? But in terms of the way that we respond to racism, nothing has changed. People engage in racism now and they say oh, I didn't mean it. Oh, I'm a good person. There was a senator this week, a Canadian senator who was talking about the residential school system in this country and who said that she was disappointed with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because it only focused on the bad things that happened to the Indigenous children in residential schools. Residential schools that took thousands, untold thousands of Indigenous children away from their parents and killed them and if they didn't kill them, tried to take away their language, tried to take away their culture. A Canadian senator is out here in 2017 saying yes, but the people who were behind those schools were well-intentioned and they did good things too and we should look at that. We continue to deny racism and genocide in that case of Indigenous people in this country. And so that's why I think these issues are still so timely because you saw the denial back then and it hasn't changed.

AMT: And in fact, you go to Red Deer where you grew up and you meet a family. Who did you meet?

DESMOND COLE: We met a family that immigrated to Red Deer just in the last year and a bit and their family of eight—two parents and six kids—who came as refugees. So they came as refugees from Democratic Republic of Congo to Red Deer. And I thought this was interesting because this is the same trip from the continent of Africa that my family took 40 years ago. And I wanted to interview another family who had just done this trip under different circumstances, mind you, because my family didn't come as refugees and just say to them what's it like living in Red Deer, which is a primarily white place which their kids had to get enrolled in school and acclimatize themselves. It was really an interesting and fascinating conversation because they too are, I think like my family, grateful for the opportunity to have come to Canada but they also experience discrimination here.

AMT: In fact, let's hear the clip.

SOUNDCLIP

There's like a lot of ignorance as to like where we come from. Do kids in Africa go to school or how come you speak good English and you’re from Africa? You know stuff like that. It's like they expect less of you because you are an immigrant or I don’t know, maybe because we’re black. There was actually one time, there were a bunch of kids behind me and I was just seated. And then they were like am I being racist if I say that I don't like the way black people look? And I was like excuse me. And I just turned, looked at them and walked away. Like you don't want to take it any further. You don't want to fight them.

AMT: So they're getting it. They’re getting that kind of conversation.

DESMOND COLE: How could they not? You know what I like about this country, Anna Maria, is that we've developed a very sophisticated defense mechanism that whenever we hear racism, we pretend like we're shocked. But black people are not shocked at the clip that you just played. There's probably very few black people in Canada who haven't had a conversation—a very painful one at that—like the one that was just relayed in that clip.

AMT: It's interesting because when you wrote the cover article for Toronto Life a couple of years ago, “The Skin I’m In”, you made that point. You talked about being stopped by police and carding, like 50 instances you can count of being stopped on the street because you're a young black man walking down the street. And you said at the time, people I know go through this every day. The rest of you don't realize it. And one of the girls in Red Deer asked you. They wanted to know if you had to act more white to get where you were today, that great divide that many, I'm going to say many of us—I'm a white woman talking to you—that we don't see you every day but you live every day.

DESMOND COLE: Well, that was a fascinating question that I got from this young woman who asked me that, yeah, so you're a journalist. You are prominent. Did you have to—in her words—“act white” in order to get to the spaces that you're in? And like this I think really reveals the heart of what we're really talking about when we talk about anti-black racism because what we're talking about is white supremacy. So the idea that I, as a black person could so-called “act white,” what does that mean? It means that even as black people, we know that there is a certain expectation, there's a certain standard of what it means to be Canadian and that standard is based on whiteness. It's based on the idea that whiteness is supreme in this country. That people who are white made the laws in this country and that that's a good thing. That the customs of white people should be celebrated in Canada and that's a good thing. That the Indigenous culture that was here for thousands of years before is just completely erased and that those of us who want to be Canadian and want to fit in have to mold ourselves into being something that white supremacy finds to be acceptable. And you notice I'm saying white supremacy and not like white individuals because you mentioned it. This is a systemic thing. This is an institutional thing. This is a history thing. It's not about one white person saying a mean thing like that reporter did in the clip.

AMT: It's about an expectation or it's about a privilege that we don't even know we have.

DESMOND COLE: Yeah. Well, I—

AMT: Or maybe we do.

DESMOND COLE: Well, I think I actually—I'm glad you said that because I do think that again, the way that white supremacy is maintained is always through this innocent denial. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh my gosh, there was an instance of racism? Oh, I'm shocked.

AMT: We need to open our eyes.

DESMOND COLE: Well, people say privilege. Maybe power is a better word. Maybe the exercise of power by people who benefit from white supremacy is what we should be talking about instead of some accidental privilege that people were born with.

AMT: Desmond Cole, thank you for your work. Thank you for making us think.

DESMOND COLE: Thanks for featuring this documentary.

AMT: It's on tonight. CBC Television’s first hand with Desmond Cole. Nine o'clock, all time zones. Nine-thirty in Newfoundland and parts of Labrador. Stay with us.

14-year-old combat veteran: retired Canadian major recalls child soldier

Guests: Shelly Whitman, Brent Beardsley, Walter Dorn, Jack Granatstein

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

The fact is we were pleased to very recently announce up to half a billion dollars for peace operations and up to 600 Canadian peacekeepers. The question on where to deploy them is obviously an extremely important one that Canadians expect us to take extremely carefully.

AMT: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking at the UN last September. Well, the question of where to deploy Canadian peacekeeping troops is still unsettled. The West African country of Mali appears to be quite likely. UN forces there have been protecting the local populations from Islamic insurgents. It's become the UN's deadliest ongoing mission. And there's another risk involved that may be holding back the Canadian government from sending troops—that's the fear that Canadian soldiers may face attacks from child soldiers. Terror groups and some government forces have been known to use children as combatants in Mali. The idea of using lethal force against a child who is a soldier is very fraught. In fact just last week, the Canadian Forces released a new report known as the child soldiers doctrine. The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative contributed to that report and that group's executive director Shelly Whitman is with us from Halifax now. We're also joined by retired Canadian Forces Major Brent Beardsley. He now does training in countries including Sierra Leone and Uganda for the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. In the nineties, Brent Beardsley served in the peacekeeping mission in Rwanda. That was the time of the genocide where he did encounter child soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Brent Beardsley is in Kingston, Ontario. Hello to you both.

SHELLY WHITMAN: Good morning, Anna Maria.

BRENT BEARDSLEY: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Brent Beardsley, let's start with you. What was your first encounter with a child soldier when you got to Rwanda?

BRENT BEARDSLEY: My first encounter with a child soldier in Rwanda was in the late summer of 1993 when I accompanied General Dallaire on a reconnaissance mission to that country. They had just signed a peace agreement and we were there to assess the requirements of a peacekeeping force. The mission required us to visit both sides, both parties and to extensively examine their capabilities or their capacities. And on our trip to the Rwandan Patriotic army which was the rebel force at the time, they made extensive use—as a matter of fact I would say the majority of their soldiers were child soldiers—and I was somewhat taken aback or shocked by that. My personal bodyguard who was given to me to take me to various locations was 14 years old and he'd been a veteran for three years of combat. And that was my first exposure to, on a personal level, to a child soldier.

AMT: What moment stays with you when you met him?

BRENT BEARDSLEY: I think first and foremost, the fact that he had all of the characteristics of a good professional soldier. His boots were clean. His uniform was clean. His weapon was clean and oiled. He took me through various areas, walked me through minefields, that type of thing and his response to his superiors, all of that stuff was very professional in the sense of he looked all the part of a soldier. And then on the way back at the end of the day, I happened to have a pack of Tic-Tacs with me and I gave him a Tic-Tac candy and he apparently enjoyed it. And I gave him the whole pack and he sat there and he ate the entire pack of Tic-Tacs, one after another. And in that moment, I actually saw through the soldier facade and saw the child. And that's when I realized that not only was he a soldier, but he was still a child very much and then later conversations that I had with him, certainly his conversation and his speech, his hopes, his aspirations, his dreams revealed to me that he was a child.

AMT: A boy.

BRENT BEARDSLEY: A boy.

AMT: Shelly Whitman, what's the definition of a child soldier?

SHELLY WHITMAN: Well, when we look at the definition of a child soldier, it's fairly wide and a lot of people aren't well versed on that. But essentially we're looking at boys and girls. We're looking at children that are used in support functions. So that can be anything from being a spy to a sexual slave to being a messenger, a porter, but it also means those children that are used on the frontlines. And we're talking about any person below the age of 18.

AMT: They're also used as suicide bombers sometimes, huh?

SHELLY WHITMAN: Absolutely.

AMT: Brent Beardsley, did you have threatening encounters with child soldiers in Rwanda?

BRENT BEARDSLEY: Absolutely we did once the genocide started in April of 1994 because the majority of the Interahamwe militia who were responsible for the genocide were in fact children under the age of 18, usually supervised by adults older than that. And they conducted most of the killings. So as we were traversing areas trying to rescue people or trying to get humanitarian assistance, whatever through areas, we constantly encountered them at roadblocks or viewed them at massacre sites. They were very, very prevalent. And of course, also the Rwandan Patriotic army like I said, their troops as they began to advance were overwhelmingly or the majority of them anyway, were child soldiers.

AMT: So you're meeting them, they're armed and they're hostile.

BRENT BEARDSLEY: Absolutely.

AMT: What did you do?

BRENT BEARDSLEY: The best you could with what you had. One of the techniques we learned was to focus on the adult commander, whoever that is. Focus on him. Only engage him in dialogue. Make sure you've got a gun pointed at his chest so that he knows if anything goes wrong, he's going to be the first one that's going down. And he would usually get the children into some sort of order. He didn't want the situation to escalate. With the Rwandan Patriotic army it was totally different because they were an exceptionally well disciplined force and just as I'd seen that child as a professional, they overwhelmingly conduct themselves as professionals. Their officers and NCOs had a pretty good grip on them.

AMT: Shelly Whitman, they know when they take a child soldiers, that that might give an adult soldier on the other side some pause, right?

SHELLY WHITMAN: Absolutely. That's one of the biggest reasons why we've got a lot of armed groups and there are still armed forces around the world that are using children because they understand it creates a moral dilemma. Groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda and Joseph Kony and others now that have learned from that. From Boko Haram to ISIS to al-Shabaab in Somalia, they all understand that this is clearly something that creates a dilemma for the soldiers that will face them. And we also know in instances around the world that there are countries that have openly admitted to us that they did not want to go into certain theatres of operation because they had intelligence which told them they would largely be facing child soldiers.

AMT: So Shelly, why was it important for the military to have this document, this child soldiers doctrine that your organization worked with them on?

SHELLY WHITMAN: Oh, it’s so incredibly important because Canada is now the first country and the first professional force around the world to have guidance on this and that means that from now on, we will ensure that our forces have proper training, preparation on this from an operational level down to the very tactical levels. And without thinking about this beforehand, what will happen is that our soldiers will not face it with professional reactions. They'll use what we call the emotional part of the brain instead of the cognitive portion of the brain to think through the reactions and think through the different scenarios. So this doctrine is fantastic in the fact that it will ensure that we will have proper preparation for our forces. But on top of that, I want to also reiterate that it gives Canada great opportunity to give leadership on this issue to other countries and nations around the world.

AMT: So how should peacekeepers treat child soldiers?

SHELLY WHITMAN: Look, there's a number of different scenarios that exist and so I want to make it really clear to the Canadian public as well that while we always go to the most horrific context of a gun to gun scenario or the suicide bomber, that there's a whole range of interactions that exist between soldiers or peacekeepers and children. And that can exist from seeing children being recruited to seeing children who are being used as interpreters or spies or hanging around your military camp. And so there are a bunch of different interactions that exist and it's very clear that we have to understand all of these contacts so that it is at the one time about looking at the specific interaction and at the other time understanding that when our soldiers are prepared for seeing this and understanding it, there are critical entry points that we have for not only preventing the use of child soldiers but in de-escalating and reducing conflict overall.

AMT: Because they thought about it ahead of time and know that what they might be able to expect, I guess too, huh? In a very concrete way.

SHELLY WHITMAN: Absolutely. And it will help with the professionalization and the overall response. We believe very much that the use of child soldiers is an early warning indicator for mass atrocities and genocide.

AMT: Brent Beardsley, we know that a soldier and a peacekeeper, they have a right to defend themselves if it's their life or your life as a soldier and that would mean perhaps shooting a child soldier. But I'd want to ask about the emotional side. For a Canadian peacekeeper to be in conflict with a child soldier, there's an emotional toll there too, huh?

BRENT BEARDSLEY: There's an emotional toll there but nothing in our training prevents or in any way interrupts the rules of engagement to defend oneself. So in our training, we're not trying to have soldiers second guess themselves or delay in their reactions or whatever. We're just trying to inform them and to prepare them with skills, knowledge and attitudes that they need to effectively, legally and humanely interact with children and child soldiers. There is a psychological toll that can be taken but a soldier will be much better prepared to deal with that if they have that training before they deploy that guides then their interactions while they're in that field. And I think it will actually lead to the lowering of casualties vs. increasing casualties that they will face when they face child soldiers.

AMT: I am really struck by the fact that there was a time when we first—not first—but the use of child soldiers seemed so prevalent in the nineties, that it seems like it's gotten even worse now, Shelly.

SHELLY WHITMAN: It's very interesting that you say that because I would say that it's hard for us to know specific numbers, but what we're really clear on is that there are many contexts and every conflict that exist right now has child soldiers in one form or another. So you're correct that I think that the situation may seem like it's worse. One point that I want to make clear though is that this is an opportune time for us to do something proactive to help address this issue because all of the efforts around the world have been on the reaction to this problem. How do we deal with children after they're out of armed conflict? And South Sudan is a great example of a country where it has just continuously seen child soldiers being used and recruited every time they go back to war because we haven't done anything effectively to really break that cycle. And our approach is trying to look at what can we do to take away that tactical and strategic advantage of those using child soldiers so that it's no longer purely a moral dilemma that we aren't prepared for. And that's where I see a critical role for Canada to play to take leadership on this issue.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you both for your thoughts today.

SHELLY WHITMAN: Thank you.

BRENT BEARDSLEY: Thank you, Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Shelly Whitman, executive director of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Institute. It helped write the doctrine for Canadian Forces facing child soldiers. She joined us from Halifax. Retired Canadian Forces Major Brent Beardsley served in Canada's peacekeeping efforts in the mid-nineties in Rwanda where he did encounter child soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He joined us from Kingston, Ontario. Well, nearly 120 peacekeepers have been killed in the four-year-old UN Mali mission. Al-Qaeda is a strong presence there—AQIM—al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The mission's supporters say the same factors making it dangerous also make it worthwhile. Walter Dorn is a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and at Canadian Forces College. He's been working as a technology expert at the UN and we have reached him in New York City. Hello.

WALTER DORN: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: Do you think Canadians should join the UN mission in Mali?

WALTER DORN: Absolutely. It's at the cutting edge of peacekeeping. The UN is doing all kinds of innovation in that mission and there's a desperate need there. So it's a mission for which Canada is well- equipped and we can make a contribution to the wider international efforts of the United Nations in Africa.

AMT: And why would Canada specifically have significant involvement there?

WALTER DORN: Well, we have, first of all, a history. We've been training in Malian armed forces in the past. We also are a Francophone country that is able to provide much more in terms of communication with a local population than many other countries. We have links to Africa through development assistance and it's an area where there is a desperate need and we have well-trained soldiers who have experience like Brent Beardsley, who have experience in peacekeeping operations.

AMT: We know that the mission in Mali has been a dangerous one for peacekeepers—some 114 deaths—and 72 of them were considered malicious acts, some kind of murder, I guess. Some kind—I don't mean to be flippant. So how big a risk would this be to Canadian soldiers?

WALTER DORN: It's a risk but it's not nearly as risky as Afghanistan. If you actually look at the rates for the 13,000 uniformed personnel in Mali, their rate comes down to 0.3 per cent a chance in a year that a peacekeeper will die. That's about six times less than the Canadian Forces experienced in Afghanistan during the dangerous times. And if you actually look at the numbers of the 72 malicious attacks, the majority of those were against countries that are in the north, which are mostly the African countries who are deployed. The Chadians have the largest fatality rate. So if you look at the number of Western forces who actually died in the mission, it's much smaller. I would put the fatality rate at less than 0.1 per cent. So dangerous, yes but not at the level of Afghanistan.

AMT: We're looking at an area that does have a number of combatants including al-Qaeda, including rogue forces against government, including government forces. How much has the battlefield changed? How does Canada peace keep in a place like that?

WALTER DORN: Well, Anna Maria, you had the experience of looking at peacekeepers in Bosnia and I'd say we do have experience in dealing with the messy conflicts. The big change is that the UN is now much better equipped. They are adopting intelligence means, secured networks, advanced radars. There's a lot of experience from the early 1990s to the present day. So the UN is much better able to deal with these situations. They are incorporating child protection officers. They have the experience of about 25 missions since the early 1990s. So it's a much bigger and better enterprise, although it still desperately needs help.

AMT: Should the possibility of having to confront child soldiers weigh into the decision to take this mission on?

WALTER DORN: I think it should and in fact, it should be on the side of favouring our contribution because we have to stop these children from being converted into child soldiers. And there is an ongoing peace process. There have been recent progressive measures where the [unintelligible] people who were formally rebelling against the government are now working with the Malian armed forces and we have to make sure that those people who have decided to follow a peace process have a chance. And that includes keeping their children safe.

AMT: We did get a statement from the defence minister's office, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, on a potential mission. And I'm going to read part of it to you. This is a quote saying the government is “gathering information and actively examining options to see how and where Canada can best support UN peace operations. But no decisions about specific deployments have been made at this time.” Why do you think we have not seen a decision on this yet from the Canadian government?

WALTER DORN: Well, I think it's unfortunate that Canada is taking so long. A year and a half and we haven't increased the number of military peacekeepers from the time of the Harper government which is around 30 military peacekeepers in all UN missions. The government has had lots of time to study. They’ve sent so many missions over to Mali to look at the situation. The minister himself has been in that region and I can't really fathom why it's taking so long. I mean the latest excuse was that they had to check with the Trump administration. But I don't think that's a valid excuse. We shouldn't need to be checking with Uncle Sam next door. We should be doing what's declared in the mandate letter to the minister which is rapid deployment and we certainly haven't been rapid. While Africa suffers and the UN struggles, Canada dithers.

AMT: Do you think that they see this as intractable?

WALTER DORN: I think that they’re more realistic than that. It’s certainly not intractable. Local conflicts in that area, in Sierra Leone, in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, they have been solved through peacekeeping initiatives. Peacekeeping has worked in West Africa. And if you look at the history and the capability of the UN, they'll see that it's a method that works. It struggles and it needs capable troop contributors and the UN has been waiting on Canada for over a year. In fact, they were even thinking of giving us the force commander position and delaying the appointment so that Canada could put in someone. But this long delay just left the UN in limbo and the UN had to proceed and they've now appointed a force commander from Belgium.

AMT: Okay. Walter Dorn, thank you for your thoughts.

WALTER DORN: You're welcome, Anna Maria.

AMT: Walter Dorn, professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and the Canadian Forces College. He's currently working at the United Nations. He's in New York City. Well, when it comes to a potential mission in Mali, not everyone is convinced it would be worth the risks and there are questions about whether peacekeeping would be the right term for what Canadian troops would be doing. Jack Granatstein is a political military historian and the former director of the Canadian War Museum. He's in Toronto. Hi.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: Good morning.

AMT: Well, should Canada send peacekeepers to Mali?

JACK GRANATSTEIN: I think it depends on what their mandate is. If it's peacekeeping, there is no peace to keep. If you call it peacekeeping, that determines to some extent your equipment and your rules of engagement. If we're there to try to stamp out al-Qaeda terrorism and other Islamic terrorism in what is essentially a war—that's a different question—then it is probably in our national interest to participate and we equip our troops with what they need to do that job. We give them some heavy equipment, some heavy firepower and robust rules of engagement. It sounds to me from what Mr. Dorn just said and what the government has said is that they see Mali as peacekeeping, a more robust peacekeeping perhaps, but still peacekeeping. And that means to my mind the wrong way to go about dealing with Islamic terrorism in that part of the world.

AMT: So in other words, there is no sort of rule of engagement under the peacekeeping umbrella that actually allows the military to confront.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: It’s a war. It’s a war there. And we have to be prepared to fight a war. Peacekeeping is supposed to—one of the basic principles says that the parties involved want peace. You're there to try to help them reach peace. There was no such agreement in Mali and there's probably never going to be one. That's the difficulty. So if we go into Mali, let's do it in a way that recognizes what we're facing. Let's not try to use it as a way of getting a seat on the UN Security Council. Let's do it because it serves our national interest to help destroy Islamic terrorism.

AMT: The French have approached Canada to join missions in Mali. They're actually in the Sahel. I guess they're in a wider region of Africa. And there has been some Canadian strategic airlift support to the French but the French have been there for a while. What could Canadian troops learn from their experience?

JACK GRANATSTEIN: I think we would probably learn that it's a war and that the French have not been wholly successful in winning that war. If we go in, we need to understand that there will be casualties on both sides. Mr. Dorn takes the view that the casualties will be acceptable. Maybe. Perhaps it's not his son that's serving there.

AMT: And so this really comes down to the political decision to call what's going on there what's really going on there.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: That's my view. Peacekeeping is a bromide for Canadians. We love it. We think we do it well. We think the world looks to us to lead peacekeeping. Some of that trope is probably even true. But the world is different now. And I don't think we should put our soldiers into the field under a false label in order to help the government get a Security Council seat in two years’ time. To my mind, that is a recipe for disillusioning a lot of Canadians and causing casualties.

AMT: Is there a place where you think Canadian peacekeepers should be?

JACK GRANATSTEIN: I think we go where we can do the job. I don't think we go around shopping our soldiers for a UN mission, any UN mission. Let's find a place where it serves the world's interests, serves Canadian interests and helps to bring peace. That requires to my mind, it has to be in our interest. It has to go into a place where there is an opportunity to make peace. It has to have an end date that's fixed. There has to be easy access for Canadian supplies to get in and if necessary for the troops to get out. We have to recognize as well that we have very limited numbers of army troops. Mali, as Dorn said, is probably a place for Francophones. We have three battalions of Francophone entry—about 1,800, 1,900 men. If we put 600 into Mali, they will be on a constant rotation cycle. They will be there, they'll be recovering, they'll be retraining to go back and you burn out your soldiers very quickly when you do that. In other words, you can't just throw numbers of people all over the world, supply them and keep your military functioning. Otherwise you burn out. So let's do what serves us best. We need to consider the Canadian Forces. Fund them properly, equip them properly, give them the numbers to do the job then maybe, maybe you can shop around for a good peacekeeping mission.

AMT: Okay. Jack Granatstein, this comes down to political will then.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: It comes down to political will and so far, we have much talk and not much will.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you for your perspective.

JACK GRANATSTEIN: Thank you.

AMT: Jack Granatstein, political military historian, former director of the Canadian War Museum. He joined us from Toronto. Well, we're going to take a minute now to recognize the people who worked very hard to bring you The Current this week.

STEPH KAMPF: Hi, I’m Steph Kampf, one of the producers here at The Current. This week, the show was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, John Chipman, Sam Colbert, Lara O’Brien, Shannon Higgins, Sujata Berry, Kristin Nelson, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Samira Mohyeddin, Pacinthe Mattar and Willow Smith. Thanks go out this week to senior graphic designer, Ben Shannon. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Transcriptions are provided by Eunice Kim and Rignam Wangkang. Our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: Thank you to all our producers who work on this program. That is today's edition of The Current. Stay with Radio One for q. Tom Power has a rare feature interview with Sting. And a reminder: you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app, free from the App Store or Google Play. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to our program. We are www.cbc.ca/thecurrent on our website and you can go to the contact link. Find us on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC or go to our Facebook page. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Marcia Young will be here tomorrow as our Friday host. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Ending theme]

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

March 9, 2017 full episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode