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The Current Transcript for November 13, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Here we go again. This is Witch Hunt 2.0. Ukraine. No due process again. Rampant hypocrisy again. A wild conspiracy theories, lies, a hoax again.

LAURA LYNCH: Yes Sean Hannity, here we go again. Today marked the start of public livestream impeachment hearings against U.S. President Donald Trump. And while those who support him see it the way Fox's Hannity does, others Democrats namely, claim this is all about transparency, justice and building the case against the president. That is first up today. After that, why a small African nation is leading the way in bringing Myanmar to account for genocide with Canada's support. And in about an hour.

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VOICE: We're finding that a lot of our island is starting to disappear due to the ice melting, the permafrost. And that's what we live on in this part of the world. As soon as that ice starts to melt, well then it's going to disappear on us.

LL: Gerry Kissoon knows what he sees around him in Inuvik. This winter groups of people are heading north, including Canadians, trying to figure out why it's happening and how quickly they'll reveal the challenges and the rewards of working in the midst of an Arctic winter. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

Putting Trump impeachment inquiry on TV allows public to see the facts up close: former congresswoman

Guests: Lyndsay Duncombe, Elizabeth Holtzman, Robert Ray

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VOICE 1: If we find that the president of the United States abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, or if he sought to condition, coerce, extort or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his re-election campaign and did so by withholding official acts, must we simply get over it? Is this what Americans should now expect from their president? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?

VOICE 2: What we will witness today is a televised theatrical performance staged by the Democrats. Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Kent, I'd like to welcome you here. It seems you agreed, witting or unwittingly, to participate in a drama. But the main performance, the Russia hoax has ended, and you've been cast in the low rent Ukrainian sequel.

LL: Opening remarks from U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Devin Nunes before the public live streamed impeachment hearings into U.S. President Donald Trump. A new phase into the House of Representatives investigation began today. For the first time the proceedings are public and millions are expected to be watching. To give us a primer on what to expect today and in the days ahead, I'm joined by the CBC's Senior Washington Editor, Lyndsay Duncombe. She's in our Washington, D.C. studio. Hi.

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: Good morning.

LL: So who has testified so far Lyndsay?

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: Well, we've heard opening statements from the acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, along with another top diplomat with the State Department, Mr. Kent. And George Kent laid out very much along the lines of what his opening statement was his concerns over the pressure that the White House was putting on the Ukrainian government to order investigations into Joe Biden, as well as the origins of the Russia invest investigation. There is one new bit of information which is beyond what both of these men have testified in closed door depositions and that relates, Laura, to a conversation that Bill Taylor, the acting ambassador, said that his aide had with Gordon Sondland, who is someone who was the ambassador to the EU. And Sondland was on the phone with Donald Trump. The aide asked them what Donald Trump thought about the security situation and aid to Ukraine and Sondland's answer, according to Taylor, was that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for. So there we have a motive here and what Democrats will try to paint as an abuse of power. President Donald Trump wanting to get Ukraine to investigate his rivals and withholding that much needed military aid because of it.

LL: OK Lyndsay, those are what came from opening statements. How long is the questioning expected to go on today?

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: Well, this process is going to unfold with a number of different kinds of questioning immediately following opening statements. What's going to happen is the the Democrats will have 45 minutes and that questioning will be led by Adam Schiff and he will have the ability to lean on or work with a committee lawyer employed by the Democrats. After that 45 minutes, the Republicans get 45 minutes. That will be led by Devin Nunes, who also has a lawyer working with him. What isn't clear is whether that will be enough for the top lawmakers on the committees or if they will start a new 45 minute round a with that. Kind of questioning, then we move on to a state, a section that will be more typical of a hearing with kind of the staccato back and forth of five minute increments of testimony with each of the lawmakers, which could also go on for several rounds. The estimate is, is that this will wrap up sometime between 230 and 430. But already, Laura, there have been several points of order that the minority Republican members have put in place asking for specific votes. And it's unclear exactly how long this will go on.

LL: You gave us a sense there of some of the theatrics around the hearings themselves today. What else can you see going on in the room there, aside from the actual testimony?

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: Well, it's not even in the room in terms of the people who are who are stalling and it's obviously crowded and there's cameras everywhere. It's outside the room, Laura. Our producer, Sylvia Thompson, was in line with the public, members of the public who were waiting to get into this hearing and the video that she sent us and I think she tweeted it goes on for a full minute of regular people someone even brought a houseguest, someone that was staying at their house who want to be part of this moment. And that's one of the things that has been unclear in all of this, is how much will the American public become engaged in these hearings? Because they're detailed, they're complicated. You know, we just heard Bill Taylor go on about all these different meetings and different phone calls with all of these these names. And unlike other impeachment proceedings for Nixon and for Bill Clinton, this is all playing out in a highly polarized country where people get their news or their interpretation of events from partisan sources, largely, especially on the Republican side. There are entrenched opinions. So the degree to which Americans will be paying attention, the degree to which mind will beat minds will be changed and the degree to which there will be any big revelations are the questions that we're watching for today.

LL: And Lyndsay, what can we expect in the next several days? How quickly will this phase of the impeachment process wrap up?

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: This week and next week there will be public hearings. There have been several more public hearings announced on three days next week. So there will be similar proceedings to this one, including other top officials within the White House and within the State Department who will share their version of the events that we laid out today. After that, what happens is if there are no more hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, it goes to the Judiciary Committee. Ultimately, it's up to the Judiciary Committee. Lorre to draft a articles of impeachment, which would then be voted upon if, as the numbers would suggest, the president is impeached in the House of Representatives in a House vote. It goes over to the Senate. At that point, the Senate would have a trial in which there would be the president's lawyers would be able to participate in that. The Senate would ultimately decide whether or not Donald Trump would be removed from office. Given the Republican control in the Senate and the fact that removing the president from office would take 20 Republicans to vote for it, that's unlikely at this stage.

LL: Lyndsay, thanks very much.

LYNDSAY DUNCOMBE: No problem. Thank you.

LL: Lyndsay Duncombe is CBC's Senior Washington Editor. She was in our Washington, D.C. studio. Earlier today I talked to two people who have worked on the inside of presidential investigations. Elizabeth Holtzman is a former Democratic congresswoman from New York. She served on the House Judiciary Committee, charged with investigating the Watergate scandal. Her new book is called The Case for Impeaching Trump. And Robert Ray is a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation. They were both in New York City. Hello.

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Hi. How are you?

ROBERT RAY: Good morning.

LL: Elizabeth Holtzman, let's start with you. What are you watching for in today's hearing?

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, I think the most important thing is if the Democrats want to persuade the American people to support an impeachment effort, it's going to have to be like Watergate, in which the American people got to see witnesses up close. The Senate did that job during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. The US Senate was the one that held the public hearings. But that was vital because people got to see the witnesses, judge their sincerity, judge their credibility, understand the narrative, and that's vital. What's happened up till now, because most of the conversation has been behind closed doors. Most of the witnesses have testified behind closed doors. Mahler's witnesses testified in secret before the grand jury. The American people have heard about the facts secondhand. So the most important thing is for the witnesses to be heard firsthand and for the American people to find them credible. What's going to happen here is you're going to have very experienced foreign service officers, people who served under many administrations, Democratic and Republican, who are highly respected, had been given sovereignty. I mean, Mr. Taylor, Acting Ambassador Taylor, was selected by Trump's own secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, begged to come back to Washington. He strongly supports strong U.S. policy towards Ukraine. He was the ambassador there years ago. He understands that policy in that area. He understands foreign policy really well. He's a very credible, he's a person with credible expertise. People have to hear what he has to say. So I think that's the important thing.

LL: OK. Robert Ray, I want to give you your chance. What do you think? Will anything come out in these public hearings that we haven't already heard from the closed door testimonies?

ROBERT RAY: It's hard to say. A lot of people are speculating over whether or not there will be any surprises here other than what has already been released selectively by the Democrats as a result of the depositions that have already been held. They've chosen to lead with these two and I agree with Ms. Holtzman that the purpose of that is, I think to present a career official State Department united front that I think probably will suggest more that they didn't particularly appreciate the fact that the president, through Rudy Giuliani and others, were conducting or attempting to conduct foreign policy outside of the usual chow channels. But really the focus from I think Republicans as far as cross-examination is concerned, is likely to be about the fact that it's an odd choice for the Democrats to begin with these two witnesses who don't. And I think they will acknowledge have any personal knowledge with regard to the only thing that ultimately really matters in connection with an impeachment. And that is the president's personal knowledge. Impeachment is not a proceeding about impeaching an administration. It's an impeachment of a duly elected president, that is to say, the the individual himself. And so I think you'll see a fair amount of the other side of the story, which, of course, we have not yet seen based upon what has already been released. You'll hear much more in the way of cross-examination about the limits of these two individuals and their personal knowledge involving the president himself.

LL: OK, Elizabeth Holtzman, what is the best case for Democrats to make for impeachment?

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, let's just go back to one, before I answer that question, I want to make a very important point. If there is no firsthand information, who is responsible? The president of the United States. Donald Trump himself has said that no one is to cooperate. No one in his administration is to provide any evidence. No one in this administration is to provide a single document. He has intimidated and he has ordered witnesses to stay away. What's going to happen as a result of that is the deprivation of the American people of the facts. So if the Republicans want to start screaming oh well, we don't have firsthand information about the president, that's first of all, distraction from part of the story, but it's also partly the fact that the president himself is covering up. But to get to your point, what the Democrats have to do is to make sure that the case is presented in a fair and serious and dignified way. And that's what's going to happen. And the case is presented by experienced diplomats. I have no idea what their partisan background is, what their politics are and it doesn't really matter about that. And I think the idea that their concerns about Ukraine and their concerns about what happened, the president's conduct, as it was reported to them and as they know from the transcript that was released, the rough transcript, is a concern about our country and the rule of law and constitutional government and democracy. It has nothing to do with being deprived or seeing outside individuals acting on behalf of the president. They've seen that before.

LL: Robert Ray just let me put that to you, what Elizabeth Holtzman just raised, because we do know that there are witnesses who have been told not to testify, and some Democrats have suggested that in itself could become an article of impeachment, i.e., obstruction of justice. Do you think the Democrats have a strong case to build here?

ROBERT RAY: No, I mean, that's a process argument. What I would suggest to you is a process fell. That argument was also raised during Watergate. It was raised during Whitewater. You know, there are legitimate reasons for any president to invoke executive privilege or presidential privilege to pre vent certain witnesses from testifying. And while one can make an argument that that constitutes an impeachable offence, i.e., obstruction of justice, it's not a particularly good one. And if you're objective here is to generate public sentiment on a bipartisan basis, which is required in order to remove a president from office. If that's the best that you can do, that is a particularly weak argument. It was an argument that was raised, for example, in connection with Watergate. It did not engender significant bipartisan support. What engendered bipartisan support during Watergate was the more substantial issue about slush fund payments to witnesses in order to alter testimony that constituted obstruction of justice and also direct presidential participation and direction, which was reflected in the tapes in the president's own words. Nothing like that is alleged to have occurred here.

LL: Elizabeth Holtzman, let's give you a crack at this because you were there. Do you see any similarities between this process and the Nixon impeachment process in the 1970s?

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, first of all, it was not an obstruction of justice, the refusal of the president to provide documents, Nixon. That was obstruction of the impeachment process. It's not a crime, but it strikes at the Constitution itself. That is what impeachment is about, a threat to democracy, not a violation of the criminal code. And a president who decides that he is not going to tolerate, cooperate with or in any way, shape or form, allow others in his administration to do that is someone who is deeply defying and destructive of the Constitution. And the Nixon's refusal to cooperate with the committee at the end was an article of impeachment. Here, it's even more broad and widespread than what Nixon did in terms of ordering people not to show up and so forth. But in any case, the similarities between this and Watergate are Watergate was built around President Nixon's efforts to stop at nothing using the powers of the presidency to become re-elected in 1972. That's what the cover up was about. But of course, it was more than just the cover up of the Watergate break in that was involved in the impeachment of Richard Nixon and the articles of impeachment. Here you have the same kind of thing, which is the president of the United States, using the power of his presidency, Donald Trump, to get elected no matter what in 2020. So what is he doing? He's buoying a small, fragile democracy to cook up information that will help him in his presidential election. A president can't use the powers of his office. That's a serious and grave abuse of the power to enhance his own personal situation or for personal gain and definitely not interfere with our election system.

LL: I want to turn to one other thing that does seem pretty different to me from the days of Watergate and perhaps even the days of the Clinton impeachment hearings. And Robert, I'll start with you. The media landscape was very different. I'm wondering whether you think a televised public hearing had the same impact it once did on the American public?

ROBERT RAY: I don't know about that. I mean, you certainly won't have the viewership at least instantly that you had then. I mean there were, I don't know, 20 something million people, I think that were tuned in at any given time to the Watergate hearings. I remember them. I was 13 at the time and in eighth grade. And it even from that limited perspective, it captivated the country's attention. I suppose now that while the, you know, news is disseminated in so many more different outlets, any one of which doesn't capture the public imagination. But I suppose collectively, it probably remains to be seen whether this will have, based upon how diffused the news is now, but nevertheless, whether public sentiment is affected by the public phase of the impeachment inquiry. I don't think we know the answer to that question yet.

LL: Elizabeth Holtzman, we only have a few seconds left. What do you say to that?

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: I agree. We won't know till this process is over, but I do know that there was a lot of screaming and yelling on the part of Republicans that is an unfair process. But the fact of the matter is, the process was done in a way so that the ultimate decision making would be in public and before the American people and that's what's happening now. So Americans will get the chance to judge for themselves what these people have to say, what the facts are and what they think about them. And that's the important thing. This is a part of a democratic process. It was created by the framers of the Constitution to protect our democracy and that's what's happening now.

LL: One word answer from you each. Elizabeth Holtzman, impeachment or no impeachment?

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, I think the House will vote for impeachment, and I think ultimately the country will support that. I don't know what the Senate will do.

LL: Robert Ray?

ROBERT RAY: Yes. I think there will be a exclusively party line vote in favour of impeachment, which is likely to have a similar response in the Senate.

LL: And I'm out of time. Thank you very much to both of you. Robert Ray is a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation. Elizabeth Holtzman is a former Democratic congresswoman from New York. She served on the House Judiciary Committee, charged with investigating the Watergate scandal. Her new book is The Case for Impeaching Trump. They were both in New York City. Well the CBC News is next. Then.

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VOICE: I don't think there's ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what's happening.

LL: Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi might not think there's ethnic cleansing going on, but for the first time, her country is facing allegations of genocide in an international court. We'll find out what that might mean for Myanmar and the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have been displaced by violence in our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

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What is Canada's role now that a genocide case against Myanmar has been launched?

Guests: Nahlah Ayed, Payam Akhavan, Bob Rae

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, the Arctic climate is changing fast. We'll talk to locals about what they're seeing then go big picture with researchers who are trying to document the changes in an effort to find out what might be next. That's in half an hour. But first, seeking justice for the Rohingya.

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VOICE: We are of the opinion that there are certain extremist elements who do not want peace in the Rakhine, who do not want solution to the problems in the Rakhine, because for many terrorists, problems are what they thrive on. So we are disappointed in the fact that the international community has paid very little attention to the terrorist element of the problems in Rakhine.

LL: Myanmar's civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, continues to blame the terrorist elements in the Rakhine region of the country for the violence there. It erupted in 2017. Investigations concluded that Myanmar's security forces razed dozens of Rohingya villages, displacing more than 700,000 and killing thousands. Canada was the first country to call the violence an act of genocide. But the international community has failed to take any real action until this week. And it's a small African country taking the accusations of genocide to an international court for the first time. The Gambia filed the case at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, accusing Myanmar of contravening the 1948 Genocide Convention. The host of Ideas, Nahlah Ayed, has reported from the region, and she's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

NAHLAH AYED: Good morning.

LL: How significant is it that this case is now going before the International Court of Justice?

NAHLAH AYED: It's very significant, Laura, because it is the first time for a group that's been described by the United Nations as the most persecuted in the world, that there is some glimmer of hope, of some kind of justice. You know, there is a long history of injustice for this group inside Myanmar. They're considered there they have no citizenship. They have no right to education or freedom of movement. And they're considered foreigners. And in the events concerning the case, as you mentioned, they're talking, the U.N. had talked about something like 7000 people, as many 7000 people killed, 700,000 people have been displaced and countless who have been sexually assaulted and had their villages razed. So all of this happened in our time and thousands of people have made their cases to journalists like us who have been there in person, to politicians, many of whom came from Canada to all kinds of investigators and yet there seemed to be an international inertia to act. So this changes things quite a bit.

LL: So the Gambia has filed the case. Do you know why the process is moving from Africa?

NAHLAH AYED: Well, it's interesting, Gambia is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a group of 57 Muslim countries. And they had formed a ministerial committee to look at this issue, at how to respond to the Rohingya crisis. Now, the chair of the committee was Gambia and in that position is the minister of justice and attorney general. His name is Abubacarr Tambadou. Now, he had extensive experience working on prosecuting Rwanda genocide cases. So he told me in an interview that what he saw and heard from the Rohingya on the ground was horrible. It was it reminded him of the stories that he had told and defended in the Rwanda case. And he said he even when he visited the camps at the Bangladeshi border, that he could smell the stench of genocide from across the border where the villages were still burning. So Gambia volunteered to take the case forward on behalf of the OIC and, of course, the OIC is supporting it and financing it as well.

LL: Let's talk about your times there. You went in 2017 to the refugee camps on the Bangladeshi side of the border. What stands out for you from that trip?

NAHLAH AYED: Well, you know, Laura, we've all been to refugee camps over the years and being foreign correspondents, I've been to quite a few and I've never, nothing prepared me for what I saw over there, for what actually became the world's largest refugee camp. We had been there just a few weeks after the violence had erupted. So people were still arriving. We were watching them on the horizon, coming on foot, basically carrying nothing but their children or their elderly or the newborns. They brought nothing. They had been on the move for days. Some had been hiding in the bush for days and eating almost nothing for four for days on end. And the conditions in the camps themselves were appalling. Already there were thousands and thousands of people there from a previous wave of violence. And so they were arriving to conditions that were already difficult. And people that the aid workers in the area were struggling to keep up because there was rain. It was the rainy season. It was very hot. There were animals, not a very hostile terrain. And these people had no shelter, no food and just a gathering of misery is what it was.

LL: What were people telling you about what they had suffered at the hands of the Myanmar army?

NAHLAH AYED: A few stories I can't shake out of my mind were the stories that women told us. They were the among the starkest in testimony. Morning. We heard we met one woman, Noor, who told us that she'd been sexually assaulted at knifepoint by several men who were wearing uniform and that after, of course, that they had destroyed her home. And another woman in the same camp. Her name was Antuwara Begum. She had four children, but we met her, she had only one. She told us that two had gone missing in the chaos and that her youngest, who was three months old, was thrown into the fire by Burmese soldiers right in front of her. The way she put it was that she, they had snatched my baby and turned him into ash. Another woman we spoke to Hasina Begum said that the military attacked her village, shot two of her boys and then slashed their throats with machetes. So consistently, we heard, that's just a sample of stories we heard. And consistently they were blamed on men with uniforms or directly Burmese soldiers.

LL: And now you went back last year on a government arranged tour on the Myanmar side. What did you see there?

NAHLAH AYED: Well, it was a very tightly controlled trip, so we didn't expect to see very much. But it was surprising how much we did see. We got a firsthand look at a internally displaced camp for Rohingya inside near Sittwe, inside Rakhine state, where 130,000 people have been held for many years against their will. And with no prospect of going to their homes in northern Rakhine, we actually stopped at a village where there had been a massacre that Myanmar had admitted to one happening there. And we saw the Muslim part of the village, which had been completely razed and burned to the ground. In addition, many times as we drove along, we saw swaths of coconut trees with burnt out tops where on the G.P.S., as we were tracking, we could see that there were villages there and all that was left were burnt out trees. So we really got a sense of the change in the landscape there. Also, we went to the other side of a no man's land where, you know, we had visited the week or the year before and we saw the conditions had gotten much, much worse than they were when we were there the first time.

LL: So how many Rohingya have actually been repatriated to this point?

NAHLAH AYED: A very, very small number have been. We met one or two of them when we were there. We were introduced to some of them. But the problem is and we were told at that border is that Rohingya do not feel safe going back. They don't feel there have been guarantees enough made to to guarantee their safety nor has there been any fundamental change in the way they are treated. Again, they're stateless. They have no chance at having an education or a passport. And so they say, why do we go back? We have no homes there. So they've been very, very few who come back.

LL: So in the introduction we heard Aung San Suu Kyi talk about terrorists being responsible. What evidence is there for that claim?

NAHLAH AYED: Well, there has been a long history of violence in Rakhine state. And, yes, it has included clashes with every single militant organization. And on October sorry, August 25th, 2017, which unleashed this wave of violence, there was an attack by this organization against a military installation which killed about 12 security forces. And that's what unleashed the violence. Now, they say it was a response to this. It was a clearance operation. But people who were there, who told us what it was like and every bit of evidence we've heard since has indicated that the response has been incredibly widespread and that it overwhelmingly affected a large civilian population.

LL: Alright. We will have to leave it there, Nahlah. Thank you very much.

NAHLAH AYED: Thank you.

LL: Nahlah Ayed is the host of CBC Radio's Ideas and a former foreign correspondent who reported extensively from the troubled region around Rakhine state in Myanmar. She's with me here in our Toronto studio. Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya-Canadian activist and president of the Rohingya Human Rights Network. She travelled from Vancouver to The Hague to witness the papers in this case being filed on Monday, a moment that she said had deep personal significance.

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VOICE: Every family have someone that they love, that I've gone through some sort of process of genocide. My grandmother had her entire family wiped out at the age of 13 because of the hate crimes in 1942. So this was really resonating to me. The moment in The Hague was quite significant to us for the reason that it acknowledges our humanity. It holds Myanmar as a state to account to what it has done to us systematically for a long, long time.

LL: Payam Akhavan is a professor of law at McGill University and a former United Nations war crimes prosecutor. He's serving as legal counsel on the team taking the case against Myanmar forward on behalf of The Gambia. And we've reached him today in London, England. Hello.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Hello.

LL: Now you just heard what Yasmin Ullah had to say. What was the mood like on Monday when you and your colleagues formally brought this case before the International Court of Justice?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, after we filed the application with the registrar of the court, we came to a gathering organized by civil society. And of course, I know Yasmin Ullah from other contexts as a very outstanding rising star in the Rohingya community and she looked at me and said, finally, we have hope and. I think it's easy to be cynical and to disregard the importance of speaking truth to justice, let alone in the context of the International Court of Justice, which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. And one of the reasons why genocide is perpetrated with impunity is because of the indifference of the world. And it's unconscionable that the world has remained silent in the face of mass murder, mass rape. The vows of never again have become meaningless. So to its credit, The Gambia, the smallest country in Africa with a population of 2 million, was the nation that rose to the occasion. And the case is really, I think, brought on behalf of the entire world. Gambia is representing the conscience of the world.

LL: How can the Gambia do this, accuse Myanmar of genocide., take the case for it, even though it's not, it hasn't had a direct impact on The Gambia.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: It's a very good question. One I would discuss in my classroom with my students, because there is a concept of obligations that are owed to the international community as a whole, unlike anything intellectual that has a Latin term obligations. So there have been very few such cases, but it's a bit like public interest litigation before Canadian courts. So The Gambia is not the directly injured state, but as a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, which was adopted by the U.N. in the shadow of the Holocaust, it and every other state party has a right to ensure that states like Myanmar respect their obligations to prevent and punish and above all, not to commit the crime of genocide.

LL: You worked on other genocide cases, including against the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. How confident are you that this case against Myanmar will succeed?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: I think it is a very strong case, like Nahla explained. I've been to to her long spoken to the survivors. And in addition to that, a United Nations human rights fact finding mission has done an exhaustive report after a two year long investigation involving more than a thousand witnesses and concluded categorically that the acts of extermination, systematic sexual violence, forced starvation and so on and so forth qualify as the crime of genocide. And of course, we will be. We have requested from the court provisional measures, which is a sort of urgent injunction. And we anticipate that sometime in December there will be a hearing and our case will be put to the test before the court. And the injunction is to do what we can to order Myanmar to cease and desist from any further genocidal acts to prevent the destruction of evidence. And in general, not to aggravate the situation. So Myanmar is responsible for acts which have already been committed since the so-called clearance operations begun around 2016. So what our request for provisional measures focuses on is irreparable harm. So we hope that this scrutiny will deter Myanmar from further atrocities against the some 600,000 Rohingya that still remain in that country.

LL: What would constitute victory, in your view?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, it's impossible to ever do justice for a genocide. The magnitude of the crime explodes the conventional limits of guilt and punishment. But I think we have to be realistic and understand, first of all, that some justice is better than none at all. And secondly, to understand that we live in an interdependent world where legitimacy is very important for governments, even governments with appalling human rights records tried to legitimize or whitewash what what they do. So I think that pending this is so long as this case is pending before the courts. Myanmar will know that its conduct is under a magnifying glass. And it is our hope that that will at least mitigate some of the worst atrocities. And in addition to that, that there will be some form of accountability. One of the requests in the application to the court is reparation for the victims, compensation for the victims and the right to safe and dignified return to their homes. So it's difficult to speculate exactly what effect this will have. But I'm absolutely confident that we are much better off with rather than without this case. Silence is not an option. And it is said that's all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. So Gambia has done something and I hope it will be joined by a chorus of other nations. How long will this process take? Well, it depends on whether Myanmar will appear to defend itself, in which case the proceedings will continue for much longer. Sometimes the cases take as little as three or four years. Sometimes they can take six or seven years. Depends on a whole lot of procedural issues, but I think that there will be a substantial time period. And even after the case is finished, there will be a judgment and a failure to comply with that judgment is a matter which can be brought before the United Nations Security Council. So, you know, the judgment in a sense, is a landmark itself in this process of trying to hold Myanmar accountable.

LL: Can I ask you just very briefly, what this means to you personally after the other cases you've been involved in?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, it's very painful to see that we've learned nothing. I remember the genocide in Srebrenica when I was serving as a young man with the United Nations and Rwanda, of course, and the horrors of the bodies in the streets. And everyone talks about never again. The United Nations adopts solemn resolutions condemning these atrocities. And there are all sorts of studies and research grants and conferences. And here we are again. Here we are again. You know, genocide is not a natural disaster. It's not an earthquake or tsunami that comes out of nowhere. It's a manmade disaster. It's a deliberate political choice. The early warning signs were there, as there were in Bosnia, as there were in Rwanda, as there were in Darfur. So I'm just very frustrated.

LL: I can hear that in your voice. Thank you very much for your time.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Thank you.

LL: Payam Akhavan is a professor of law at McGill University and a former United Nations war crimes prosecutor. He's in London, England. Bob Rae has been working as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar. His report, released last year, urged Canada to take a leading role in responding to the crisis. Bob Rae is with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

BOB RAE: Hello.

LL: How would you rate the Canadian government's response to the Rohingya crisis since your report last year?

BOB RAE: I think it's been good. I mean, I asked them to invest more money, which they have done, not as much as I had asked. There is a huge humanitarian issue quite apart from the accountability challenge. There's a huge humanitarian issue and that needs of responsible governments. But I think, you know, we look at all of the things we've done with respect to the ICC, which is the International Criminal Court, to have working in Geneva one with the fact finding mission, supporting it in very tangible ways, and also supporting the establishment of a new mechanism in Geneva that's going to gather evidence more effectively. A lot of behind the scenes discussions with a whole range of governments, including, you know, The Gambia and others in terms of how are we going to move forward. I would say there's been a strong response from Canada.

LL: How is Canada then supporting the Gambia's legal efforts?

BOB RAE: Well, that remains to be determined. Part of our problem is we have a caretaker government. It's difficult for the government to make major decisions in this current mode. And as soon as the cabinet is formed on November the 20th, we'll then be in a position to say to them, OK, how are we going to do this? And Minister Freeland has asked me to canvass the options which I'm doing, talking to various parties, governments, legal experts, all sorts people about how we could effectively assist them in this current application to the International Court of Justice. I'll be continuing those discussions, I hope, after November 20th. So what practical things could Canada do to assist? Well, there's two or three things. I mean, one is if there's an a possibility of an intervention. How exactly would one be able to intervene? What kind of legal support could we provide? And I think equally, practically, you know, can we work with other governments to support the Gambia?

LL: Financially, lawers.

BOB RAE: Yeah, exactly, in terms of just providing them with the additional expertise and money that's going to allow them to carry on a case that could take as long as two or three years and will become quite complex.

LL: Why didn't Canada just take the lead itself?

BOB RAE: Well, I think it's just better some sensitivity in terms of it within the OIC, the large organization of Islamic countries, obviously the Rohingya are Muslims. And a strong sense from that group that they wanted to continue to take a leadership role, which we have to respect. And I think it was very important for us to show that we were not looking for headlines. We're looking for results and that, you know, which country it is that's going to bring it forward. The Gambia has been very keen to move forward and take this issue. They were given a leadership role by the OIC. And I think that's something that we quite rightly respected. And I think it's important for everybody to understand that this is this is an issue that affects all countries, all signatories to the genocide convention. And it's important for a four for us to to work through those issues. What are you hoping that the legal process accomplishes? Well, the key issue is accountability. This situation did not arise as an accident. The kind of violence, the sexual violence, the the killing of people, the repression of people, the hate speech that was very widespread in Myanmar. All these things contributed to this forced departure of three quarters of a million people. But it's gone on for a long time before then. And I think we've learned from other genocides in the 20th century. We've learned how these things happen and how they emerge and how what form they take. I think the world's response. Including our own two events in Myanmar over the last 10 years has been slow to recognize that this is not just a kind of happenstance, spontaneous ethnic violence. This is a very deliberate attempt to destroy the will of a people and to destroy the capacity of people, in fact, to commit a genocide against them.

LL: But what does accountability look like?

BOB RAE: Well, accountability takes various forms. It takes, first of all, the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, the question is, what is the responsibility of the government of Myanmar for what took place? Secondly, the International Criminal Court. The issue is, well, what who did this and who within that group are responsible? So there's two issues. One is state responsibility and the other one is the criminal personal responsibility of individuals. In an ideal world, we'd be able to do both, but we're not living in an ideal world, and we don't know exactly how we're going to bring individuals to justice because Myanmar is not a signatory to the ICC. But we're not going to leave any stone unturned in terms of holding people accountable and responsible for what's taking place.

LL: Then let's just touch on again what you mentioned at the beginning, which is what the humanitarian effort should be here, aside from any efforts in the courts. What exactly are you looking for? You said Canada didn't put up as much as you wanted it to. What should Canada and other international, the international community be doing to help on the humanitarian front?

BOB RAE: Well, we have a billion people living in a huge camp, really a slum and it's a city really it's a large community in southern Bangladesh. We have another several hundred thousand people Rohingya living in very, very tough conditions in Myanmar. We can't really get at that situation because we're not allowed to, we have very limited access. And it's a broader problem in Myanmar is that the civil the continuing civil conflict between the government of Myanmar, the army and a number of various groups, particularly the northern part of the country. These are all things that we need to be engaged in because we need ultimately, the ideal would be to find a political solution that would allow the Rohingya to return and when they return to become citizens and to have an active life participating in the life of their country. But that's a challenge. Until then, we have to make sure people have education, they have access to livable conditions, and that there's a good relationship between the government of Bangladesh and all other governments in trying to assistin this humanitarian situation. We're just coming out of a cyclone season. Conditions in the camp are very, very difficult and everyone needs to understand this is still a life threatening part of the world and people are living in very precarious situations. And we simply have to keep our eye on that and respond as best we can, together with a number of other countries and the U.N. to make their lives as livable as possible until a political solution can be found.

LL: Bob Rae, thank you for your time.

BOB RAE: Thank you.

LL: Bob Rae is Canada's special envoy to Myanmar. He was in our Toronto studio. Stay tuned, in about 90 seconds, we're heading to the high Arctic. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

Scientists hoping for ground-breaking results from climate change studies in the Arctic this winter

Guests: David Scott, Sunniva Sorby, Michael Angelopoulos

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: One of my Facebook friends posted a photo of a comparison of Arviat in 2017 and also 2019. 2017 was really dry and then 2019 there was more puddles and wet. And so I wanted to see what people there think about climate change and if they feel that it's right in front of their eyes.

LL: Jordan Konek grew up in Arviat, Nunavut. It's a community of just under 3000 people on the western shore of Hudson Bay. Jordan is a video journalist with the CBC based in Iqaluit. So when he heard people were talking about the effects of climate change in October, he packed up his camera and headed home.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: One of the first things that I noticed was normally by the mid October, it's normally covered in snow and this year was a bit more different. It was a bit more moist and the roads were muddy and the rivers were still streaming. It was very unusual to see that. I noticed that kids were still in their hoodies and before Halloween time, we used to get ready for our snowmobiles to be used for trick or treating, but this time it was nothing but mud and people were still using ATVS.I spoke to some hunters and elders, and one of the people that I spoke to was William, who says it's been harder for them to catch wildlife.

[Indigenous speech]

VOICE: So here you could hear William talking about the summer of 2019, had a lot of rain. So all the rivers were flooded and deeper than they normally are. And that's where all the wildlife is across the other side of the river. So we came home empty handed all summer. I also spoke to Andrew who is also an elder.

[Indigenous speech]

VOICE: He's saying why is the wind coming from the south more often? And why is it taking longer for a winter to come back? And during the springtime all the snow that can melt in just three days to the point that you can't even ride snow mobiles. All of a sudden in just three days. So I asked him if it wasn't like that and he says yes, back in the days it was never like that. Again, this goes back to the elders observing the weather on a daily basis. These are some of the things that they've noticed throughout their lifetime living in the North.

LL: Jordan Konek, a video journalist in Iqaluit. Now as he said, people living in the Arctic have been noticing changes for years. This winter, researchers as researchers are spending time up there trying to understand what is happening and how it will affect the land and the people in the future. Over the next half hour, we're going to talk to three Canadians who are involved in these projects. First, David Scott manages the Canadian High Arctic Research Station or CHARS, which is in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. He's the president and CEO of Polar Knowledge Canada. Today, he's in Ottawa. Hello.

DAVID SCOTT: Good morning Laura.

LL: So the Canadian High Arctic Research Station officially opened in August and it was more than a decade in the making. Why is it so important to have this research centre in Cambridge Bay?

DAVID SCOTT: The importance of having the CHAR's campus operating in Cambridge Bay, there's a number of reasons. It's in an Inuit community which allows us to have access to indigenous knowledge, Inuit knowledge holders who can help us work together with scientists from Canada and around the world throughout the year to year round facility to create the best new knowledge that northerners and all Canadians need to understand how their environment is changing and how best to plan for the future. The Canadian Arctic and in particular the Central Canadian Arctic where the campus is located is relatively poorly understood. And in terms of the current status of ecosystems and how they're beginning to change, and in order to really understand change, we need that baseline information. First, how the various living components of the environment are interacting these days and by continuously monitoring them through time, we can understand how they're changing. And the science behind that is why they're changing, what are the what are the mechanisms that are happening here.

LL: Can you give me a sense of the scope of the research being done there?

DAVID SCOTT: We're currently doing a wide range of research in and around the CHAR's campus. In the building itself we're focussed on renewable energy technologies. We can test and evaluate different technologies in our own big backyard, as we call it. We're working hard to understand the ecosystems and how they're changing. And then in a radius of several hundred kilometres around the campus, we're able to support a very diverse range of partnered research, everything from how insects, animals, plants interact, how the permafrost is changing, monitoring, changing atmospheric conditions, whether it's gases being released from the permafrost as it thaws or aerosols in the air that are, you know, just literally blowing past our locations. All of this information is important to understanding the current state of the environment and by repeating those measurements through time. It allows us to detect and calibrate, change and create an understanding of why those changes are occurring. All of this information is is very important for making the right choices on infrastructure investments, how to build more sustainable housing, how to maintain the infrastructure that we've got, whether it's sewage lagoons or airport runways.

LL: David, what do you think is the most important thing that people need to understand right now about what's happening in the Arctic?

DAVID SCOTT: The first thing that people really need to understand is how quickly things are changing in the Arctic and the Antarctic. I think most people are aware that, you know, the planet seems to be warming up. It's happening two or three times faster in the Arctic. The former frozen arctic s becoming much less frozen. There are dramatic changes happening in the environment that have impacts the natural environment as well as the people who depend on that natural environment. The year round residents of the Arctic.

LL: OK, well then that leads me to this. Let's hear from some people who are out on the land a lot around in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of local communities discussing climate change]

LL: So, David, can you talk to us more about how the knowledge of local indigenous communities is being incorporated into the research?

DAVID SCOTT: It's really critical. While we try to create new knowledge of the Arctic to include the knowledge of the people who've been living there for four centuries or in fact, millennia, in some cases, incorporating indigenous knowledge means bringing the knowledge holders with us from from the design of a project, determining what questions need to be asked and answered. Understanding the local needs. That's the sort of set up phase when it comes to undertaking the work by working shoulder to shoulder with traditional or Inuit indigenous knowledge holders. It allows us to create the best new knowledge by bringing different ways of knowing together. Folks who've studied in the universities have one way of understanding things, and they may have some gadgets that help us measure things. Working with local indigenous people brings a completely different perspective. Equally important. But by combining these ways of knowing, asking the right questions and working together to solve them, that's how we can really leverage both ways of knowing to create the best new knowledge that northerners, frankly, and all Canadians need to begin to understand the changes and how to adapt to them.

LL: Do you have an example of a project that that is using both scientific and indigenous knowledge?

DAVID SCOTT: I do. A good example of working together with traditional knowledge holders is the smart ice project that Polar has supported for quite a number of years that combines high tech instrumentation that can help determine thickness of the ice with hunters and trappers who have extensive experience travelling on the ice in the winter. And by combining their knowledge, their existing knowledge of the ice and some high tech gadgets to measure its sickness and how it's changing can lead to safer travel routes. Travellers have noticed that their traditional routes are becoming less safe. In the fall there. But it's taking longer for the routes to be established. And in the spring they're sort of disintegrating prematurely. So by combining their knowledge of the routes and some sensors that help determine the thickness of the ice we're able to produce in near real time maps of effectively ice safety, where the routes safe and where are they unstable. And by literally broadcasting this up through the cloud and back down, travellers, wherever they are, can get access to not quite up to the minute, but very recent ice thickness information that allows them to make better decisions about travel on ice.

LL: That's interesting. I want to bring in another guest now. She's in Svalbard, Norway. Sunniva Sorby is the co-founder of Hearts in the Ice. And she is one of two women who are spending the winter in the Norwegian archipelago between the mainland and the North Pole. She normally lives in Squamish, B.C. Hello.

SUNNIVA SORBY: Hi, Laura. Can you hear me OK?

LL: I can hear you fine. You've been there in a trappers cabin since September. That's pretty remote. Can you describe your living conditions?

SUNNIVA SORBY: Certainly. Right now outside, it's blowing like crazy. We've got really heavy swells and lots of snow blowing. We're in a 20 square meters trappers cabin that was not designed for anybody to live in longer than maybe a month. We have no running water, no electricity. We're powered by a windmill outside that works quite well in this wind. Solar panels that are not working well right now because we've officially lost the sun. And there's two of us. We're collecting ice for water. And it's a pretty spartan basic existence where we've literally peeled back the layers of what most people might be used to in terms of what comfort means.

LL: Well, then why are you spending the winter there?

SUNNIVA SORBY: Well, that's a good question. We, my partner on this expedition and I, we met about three and a half years ago, and we both have about 25 years of experience in the polar regions. Myself in the Antarctic with polar latitudes and his up here in the Arctic and we're completely connected to our natural world in a way that our careers have revolved around it. We've been blessed with healthy bodies and sharp minds, and we wanted to not fall into the state of despair that seems so prevalent in our world today, with especially youth as it relates to climate change and we wanted to just lean in and stand up and do something about it. So we created Hearts in the Ice, which is our commitment and dedication to engaging people in a platform and dialogue around climate change. So we're doing a lot of work by collecting data for researchers, studying what in the world is happening up here.

LL: So what kinds of science projects are you doing there?

SUNNIVA SORBY: Well, it's fascinating. Neither one of us are scientists. I mean, I do remember dissecting frogs in high school and we'll be dissecting birds when we find them up here that are dead to extract plastic from their stomach lining. But we have gotten some really serious credibility from researchers. So we're working with BCIT, British Columbia Institute of Technology doing infra-red drone sensing. We're working with the Norwegian Polar Institute to study sea ice changes and also wildlife observation. We're working with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to measure phytoplankton density and salt water temperature. And then we're working with NASA. This is a most exciting thing for me actually, is looking at the aurora and taking photos and reporting back to them on the aurora and also doing cloud observation for NASA. There's two special cloud types up here they're interested in. So it's keeping us busy amongst, you know, just the day to day staying alive.

LL: The aurora borealis. You get to look at that. What are you seeing there now?

SUNNIVA SORBY: I wish I were a song writer or a poet, because it is absolutely breathtaking. We are not, we are in a place so far north where we do not need to move north to find the aurora. We are literally underneath the vortex looking straight up. And it's breathtaking beyond words. With the naked eye you can see that it's out there, but with a camera, we're able to really capture the green and the pinks and the yellows and some purple the other night. They've discovered a new aurora in northern Alberta, they called it Steve and it was a purple arc. So NASA is still very interested in what's out there and at what different times of the day. So we are actually physically closer to the lower end of the spectrum of the aurora, the green light than we are to the nearest town, which is a 140 kilometres away.

LL: How do you hope that what you're doing will better help us understand climate change?

SUNNIVA SORBY: That's a great question. We first and foremost, we are polar ambassadors, engaging people in what we hope is an inspiring and positive way around understanding what's happening by being curious and by being participatory. We're actively, you know, not every day, but three times a week. We're collecting data for scientists that are studying what's happening. We're hoping to get a data set that goes for a, you know, for nine months. And we are the first two people up in this area that have been able to provide data for the researchers studying the sea ice, the clouds, the phytoplankton, the saltwater. So we're hoping that they're adding to their understanding of how it's changing, why it's changing, and we can't stop it. I think we're we're all very smart and understand the fact that we're not going to stop climate change. It's happened, happening, but we can do is actually understand how to de-escalate the progression of it.

LL: How are you preparing for the winter?

SUNNIVA SORBY: We are preparing for the winter by simple little things like making sure everything outside is tied down. We have a polar dog with us. She is part malamute and part husky. And we're taking walks around to see if we notice any polar bear tracks because that's going to be in the dark period, which November 15th we'll fall into 24 hours of darkness. So we're preparing by making sure we have a good understanding of our surroundings and our limitations when it's dark. We're making sure that our food, everything we have now that's fresh will eventually hopefully be eaten. But if not, it could spoil quickly. So we're rotating food quite frequently from the cabin. We are making sure all of our equipment is safe and that we have things that we need both for the snowmobile, which we have here. We're testing an electric snowmobile. That everything is close by and the mental preparation is something that often goes overlooked. We have two trainers and coaches that are helping us with our, you know, just our dialogue between each other because we're good friends, but my gosh, we're living in a really small space and have to sort out all those personal things with nowhere to go. So it's challenging, to say the least.

LL: Okay. I want to bring one more voice into this conversation. Michael Angelopoulos is a part of Mosaic. It's the largest research expedition ever in the Arctic. Michael is a Canadian scientist onboard the Polar Stern, which is currently in the ice, north of Russia. Hi, Michael.

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Hi.

LL: Where exactly are you now?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Right now, we were north of 85 degrees and around 123 degrees east the Arctic Ocean, drifting northwest, hopefully over the North Pole in the coming weeks or months.

LL: For those of us who don't understand all the points that you're explaining there, where's the nearest geographical area that people can reference for where you are?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Oh, we're north of Siberia.

LL: OK. That's pretty far up there.

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Yeah.

LL: What was he journey like just to get to that location?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Oh, it was very exciting. So we started our journey from Norway and then we proceeded east towards Siberia and then we headed north to find a suitable ice flow. Like on the way, we sould first see patches of ice and then larger and larger flows until we ultimately reached an area with a much greater sea ice coverage. And after several investigations of different ice flows, we selected one and froze ourselves into it. And now we're slowly drifting with the natural turns off the ice drift.

LL: Okay, so the ship has frozen itself into the flow and that is your base for the year. What kind of information are you going to be gathering over the next little while?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: The really special thing about Mosaic is that we will get a year long time series of scientific data. So we're really looking at the interaction between the atmosphere, the sea ice and the ocean. And if you look at global climate models, we've often underrepresented sea ice loss. So clearly the depth of our knowledge for understanding the Arctic and having a complete time series, we can understand the seasonal processes that take place to better understand the impacts of climate change on our world.

LL: And what is new about this research that you're doing?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: So our team is very interested in trace gases, greenhouse gases like methane that may have a very large impact on the global climate. So what people may not know about permafrost is that permafrost also exists under the sea and on the Siberian shelf there is a lot of permafrost under the sea, which contains a lot of methane. And as this subsea thermal frost begins to fall, then some of this methane may be released into the water column. What we don't know is how much of this methane ultimately makes its way to the atmosphere. What will happen when the ice melts? But if we through Mosaic, are able to get data during the ice formation season and then during the melt season and then during the open water season, we'll be able to understand how these processes work.

LL: But aside from the work, I am sure that there's just something very special for you about being where you are. What do you wish other people could see that you're seeing around you?

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: I mean people often worry about being isolated in 24 hour darkness, but I think it's quite beautiful. So we still have a very faint nautical twilight that's illuminating, that's gently illuminating the ice and snow and it feels like you're on another planet. So we're so busy with with our scientific work that's we don't have like those moments to just stand and just in awe and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. But when we do, it really is something special that I wish everybody would have the chance to see.

LL: Alright. I want now to ask all three of you for your visions of 10 years from now. Where do you hope we are in this discussion about the north and climate change? Michael Angelopoulos, let's start with you.

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Well, I would certainly hope that we end like any kind of discussion about whether or not climate change is real. It definitely is. I would like to see more aggressive decision making for a policy that can help reduce our emissions.

LL: Sunniva, same question to you. Where are you hoping we'll be in this discussion about climate change in the north in 10 years?

SUNNIVA SORBY: That's a hard one for me to answer. In all honesty, I mean, we're living in a time where technology and information are absolutely abundant, and that's made it possible for ordinary people like myself, people like us to collect data and observations that have scientific value. And there's a word for this. It's called citizen science and it's all about curiosity and collaboration. So I hope in 10 years from now that every single person out there becomes a citizen scientist because if it is through this, I think and NASA takes it very seriously they created a whole program around citizen scientists. It's a way where we can collect stories around the change we're all experiencing and the data collected by the citizen scientists inform local decisions and policymaking. So it's a real, it's a vital way to stay current with our changing climate. And I think it's also a way for the average person who feels so sometimes removed from the scientific speak, if you will, myself included, until not that long ago to understand well, you know, when you read this and you read the changes and you read the day, you know, well what does that have to do with me? And I hope 10 years from now that everybody feels like it has everything to do with all of us. And that through the stories and through the engagement, we you know, we're literally building bridges and pathways between all of us geographically and culturally and understand that the displaced Inuit and the people that are feeling that their natural resources and their shrinking from underneath their feet, very literally, that that could be us. I hope that we take our youth that much more seriously and I also hope that 10 years from now that we're not having the same conversation.

LL: Alright. And finally to you, David Scott.

DAVID SCOTT: Well, in 10 years, I certainly hope that all research that takes place in the Arctic involves indigenous peoples as full partners, from the identification of the questions, design of the methodologies to the conduct of the knowledge creation process so that we really are valuing that ancestral knowledge that's dynamic and alive and very, very valuable in understanding the questions that are really important to be answered in the Arctic. Once that new knowledge exists, I'm very optimistic that it will be applied either at the local level for community based decision making, at the regional and national levels and indeed at the international level. And that all of this makes a more sustainable world for northerners in the north and indeed citizens of the planet, wherever they may live, because the polar regions are interconnected and they have an outsized influence on what happens in the mid-latitudes where most people on the planet live.

LL: Well, all I can say is many thanks to all three of you from far and wide for talking to us today.

DAVID SCOTT: It's a pleasure, Laura. Thank you.

MICHAEL ANGELOPOULOS: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

SUNNIVA SORBY: Pleasure and don't forget to check out our heartsintheice.com. We'll update everybody every week.

LL: David Scott is the CEO and president of Polar Knowledge Canada, which manages the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. Sunniva Sorbyi is co-founder of Hearts in the Ice Project and she's spending the winter in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. And Michael Angelopoulos is a researcher with MOSAIC, onboard the Polar Stern, the largest exploration expedition to the Arctic. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Tom Powers speaks with actor Mandy Patinkin of Homeland fame. CBC Listen is the new free app that lets you discover the very best in Canadian audio from CBC Radio, CBC podcasts and CBC Music. You can listen to The Current live from anywhere on your phone or your tablet, or you can catch up on a show or highlights on demand anytime you like. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Nov. 13, 2019 episode transcript

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