University of Saskatchewan academic faces questions about her claims to Indigenous identity

Guests: Raven Sinclair, Veldon Coburn

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We believe the Metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet. We'll be able to feel present like we're right there with people, no matter how far apart we actually are. And that's going to unlock a lot of amazing new experiences.

MATT GALLOWAY: It has been, to put it politely, a rough few months for Facebook. Leaked documents, accusations of amplifying a toxic culture. Apps that some say do more harm than good. Well, good bye, Facebook, hello, Meta. In an hour, whether a name change can change the channel for the troubled social media giant. Also this morning whether you should have the legal freedom to decline those after hours work emails from co-workers or the boss inside the push for the right to disconnect. And later, it's not just us humans who have created social networks.

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It is really this kaleidoscope of many fungi working together, connecting plants together in the forest, and it looks like and behaves a lot like an internet.

MG: Suzanne Simard's groundbreaking research on the interconnectedness of our forests has been called the World Wide Web. It changed forest ecology. It was quoted on Ted Lasso. Suzanne Simard is here in 30 minutes with the amazing story of the Mother Tree. We start, though, with a look at roots of a different kind. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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I am Anishinaabe-Metis and I also have Tlingit relatives that I've just recently had the wonderful, amazing opportunity to connect with.

MG: That's Carrie Bourassa. She is known as one of the leading indigenous health scientists in the country, lauded for her work with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the University of Saskatchewan. But now her identity is being called into question. An investigation by indigenous scholars and the CBC has found no evidence to support her ancestry and ancestry she discussed in this talk in 2018.

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My name is Morningstar Bear and my name came in Tlingit in ceremony and over six years ago now, and I couldn't understand why my name would come in Tlingit it when I am Anishinaabe-Metis. It was very confusing to me. It was so confusing to my grandmother, my kokum, who they said is a pipe carry ceremonial list that we actually went back into ceremony to ask if this really was indeed my name.

MG: In that same talk, she spoke about the importance of knowing your history.

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People will ask, Why do we have to know about our history and this over with, Isn't this done? How does this continue to impact indigenous people today? But it has very real impacts, and this small story of mine is the many, many stories of indigenous people across Canada. Not only is it real from a historical context in terms of intergenerational trauma and the fact that I even think that, you know, the fact that I was able to overcome, you know, the cycle of poverty and violence in my family, the drug and alcohol addiction in my family. That is really naive because in fact, the historical impacts of colonial violence and trauma, it's not just in the past. We still have an Indian act today.

MG: In response to the CBC's questions about the veracity of her ancestry claim, Carrie Bourassa maintains that she's made. She says she was adopted by a white man when she was in her 20s and was taken in as if she were their blood family. She also says she has hired a genealogist who's searching for evidence of her indigenous roots, and she turned down a request for an interview today. As of yesterday afternoon, Carie Bourassa is on leave without pay from the University of Saskatchewan and from her position as scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Indigenous Peoples Health. She is the latest in a growing group of people claiming indigenous ancestry and often gaining professionally and financially from their claim, whose ancestry has then been questioned. Raven Sinclair is a professor of social work at the University of Regina in Saskatoon. She's Cree, Assinniboine, Saulteaux and Metis and a member of the George Gordon First Nation. Veldon Coburn is an assistant professor at the Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies at the University of Ottawa. He's Anishinaabe and a member of the Algonquin of the Pikwakanagan First Nation. Good morning to you, both.

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Good morning.

VELDON COBURN: Good morning.

MG: Raven Sinclair, you have known Kerry Barraza for years, what did you think when this story came out about her identity?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, it was just last week, and I mean, there had been, you know, whisperings in the indigenous community for a number of years. I think when you're an academic, sometimes you can just get really focussed on what you're doing and be a bit myopic. And so but when the investigative report came out, it was very thorough and included a great, a lot of detail. And so it was really quite shocking to realise sort of for the first time that the whisperings were true, that the suspicions were, in fact, reality.

MG: What can you tell me about those whisperings?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, in my own experience, I had met Carrie's sister back in 2003, when I started working for the Indigenous People's Health Research Centre and asked her what community she was from. I assumed, because she was working in this new brand new centre that she was probably MEtis. And she said to me, Oh no, I'm not indigenous. I'm, I was, you know, just born and raised here in Regina. And I was surprised and I think I might have said, Are you sure? And she said, No, no, I'm not indigenous. And that was fine. You know, really nice person. I met Carrie shortly after because she worked at First Nations University at that time. And I I didn't connect that they were siblings. And so, over the years, as I came to understand that Carrie was matey, it was about a decade later that I learnt that they were actually siblings, and I just assumed that they must be half siblings. You know that was just a story that my brain made up to to make it fit. And then it was sometime after that, I think probably another number of years before I heard that they were- I learnt that they were full sisters. And so at that point I started to wonder, but I didn't have- I mean, I encountered Carrie a fair bit here and there in indigenous health research circles. But it wasn't so much my business, I guess, but occasionally the topic would come up and people would be checking in. What do you think about this? And I would just share the story I've just shared with you, and I think it probably added to the suspicions.

MG: Veldon Coburn, what do you make of the of the reasons that Carrie Bourassa has given for identifying as indigenous, suggesting that she was adopted into a meaty family in her 20s?

VELDON COBURN: Very hard to swallow. You know, it seems like the standard response for many when they've been backed into a corner and called out, so it almost follows a script. Now those may claim to have been adopted as an adult of some sort by some other adults and perhaps maybe in ceremony. But it's the confluence of various shifting stories that raise eyebrows. And like Dr. Sinclair mentions, you know, you sort of have the suspicions and the whispers. And then, you know, when you share these stories, you- I mean, when you have the discussions, amongst other indigenous academics because it is a fairly tight circle. I've never met Dr. Sinclair in my life before, but I can confirm through other people who she may be because I know other people who know her and from, say, the community. But when it comes up with other individuals where it does raise eyebrows and there are whispers, nobody can verify it. But it is a whole production of excuses and elaborations that that tend to follow those sort of cascade of somebody being backed into a corner or it eventually comes out that they may admit, they may finally admits or or or they're still grasping at that one last straw.

MG: Why would somebody do this? I mean, I mentioned in the introduction that this is, you know, not an isolated story in Canada. The filmmaker Michelle Latimer, the writer Joseph Boyden, come to mind as people whose indigenous heritage has been disputed. Why, Veldon, would somebody do this?

VELDON COBURN: You know, I've struggled with that myself, too, because it comes up in discussions now when we just sort of thought it was a larger social phenomenon. But, you know, we don't really necessarily. And I don't have any background in individual psychology, but you get a sense from some of these individuals that it's almost a fetishism. And I can't really pin it down to a particular personality type. I don't have that expertise in any sense, but you know, you get the sense of them around you that they're a little bit of a charlatan putting on an a on a whole production. But they've also plumbed your life, they've mined it or they've mined many others. So at the outset of your ,of the show this morning that the speeches and the talks that Dr. Bourasa gave, she goes into the most exaggerated sort of stereotypes of indigenous life, particularly the trauma that becomes a whole persona for them. And, you know, I can't explain it myself, except that and oftentimes you see the charlatans who present as, as, you know, even physically presenting as as almost a harlequin, as putting on an entire outfit and exaggerating that. And I can't tell you what the individual drive is behind it, but I think there may be, especially in the arts and academia and academia, particularly where it's rampant, is there is room for personal advancement and also material gain.

MG: Raven, from your perspective. I mean, broadly, what would someone gain from something like this?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, I think that that was just about to say that, you know, it has to do with material gain and advantage and position power ,authority ,role. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of things come down to money, and I think there must be, there must be reward that that start to accrue. And you know, those become an incentive in and of themselves to continue with the charade.

MG: What is the harm to the community if somebody falsely claims an indigenous background?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, I think in the incurious case, you can look at her sort of successive appointments and, you know, in effect, she's usurped culture and resources from other individuals who may have been on a similar career trajectory. And so I'm thinking about who else applied for that position that she was in until yesterday. And you know that could have significant implications for those individuals, their careers, their kinship networks. Most indigenous people I know, are very strongly connected to family. And we have, and community, and we have extended kinship networks of people that we support. And so, we're not out there getting wealthy. We're supporting a large, a large family or, or clan. And that's just how we roll, right? But but then, you know, if someone like Carrie comes in and and takes a position that is, you know, I mean, it's designed to sort of level the playing field of indigenous participation in the in the economy. Yeah, that opportunity is then denied to others.

MG: Veldon, what about from your perspective broadly, if you take a look at this across, you know, not specifics, but but if we're talking about something larger than individuals, if somebody is claiming indigenous background and that background, it can't be traced, that background can't be proven. What's the harm to the to the community?

VELDON COBURN: Well, there's a few points and I think Raven's talked about it for the individual is the displacement of other legitimate indigenous people who may have been selected or at least because there's equity targeted programmes and especially with these trade councils where the [unintelligilbe] Chart comes into play here is with the Canadian Research Chairs programme, which just had a huge settlement with Dr Amir at around a colleague of mine here at the University of Ottawa in the spring, setting equity targets because of the historically overlooked it. So in that particular perspective, but in the in the health research, medical sciences, health sciences as well, I think there's something particularly pernicious about ingratiating yourself within a community of which you're not especially vulnerable communities. So working with indigenous populations in health strikes me because they are vulnerable. And you know, you've made your inroads based upon misrepresentations of who you are. There could be distrust, and they're there often is amongst researchers more largely, but in particularly a health that's always been a source of pain for indigenous people of individuals coming in and, you know, conducting health research in communities without that relationship. But the displacements, the ongoing dispossession of indigenous peoples, it can be on the individual level, but more socially when you see it on such a large scale and we are seeing it expand, especially with the case of the eastern Metis individuals. It distorts overall population level figures. So we start believing that, and you can see this almost in the 2011 National Household Survey, which replaced the census that year, is in Newfoundland and Labrador. Inordinate numbers of people began identifying as indigenous on the census, and therefore it skews population, population level figures. So we start believing that socioeconomic gaps close and then therefore policy interventions become ineffective because they start drawing back governments anyways. Because you start thinking, well, health gaps are closing, education gaps are closing, things are looking good.

MG: When they may not actually be.

VELDON COBURN: Absolutely.

MG: Raven, this is sensitive, and it's tricky questioning somebody who says they're indigenous. I mean, you in some ways you're getting to the heart of who somebody says they are. Why is that such a sensitive thing to explore if it's so important?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: I think that, you know, in my experience, when someone, in indigenous contexts, I mean, we just we share our our communities. I mean, one of the first questions we ask is, where are you from? Who are your who are your relatives?

MG: And we need even in the introduction, I identified you both as your names, your profession, but also the communities that you come from.

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Yeah, and we sort of take that at face value. And so when these suspicions come up, I think that it's some sort of contrary to our values of relational honesty, perhaps to challenge people. And I think that probably most mature adults don't, they don't just assume that someone is going to be untruthful, that their history, the stories they share about their experiences are fabrications.

MG: Does that suggest that there should be, I mean, on the the responsibility of institutions, if people are self-identifying, should there be more stringent vetting from institutions, if somebody says this is who they are, then the institutions have to go about saying, OK, we need to prove who you are?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, I think that it's, you know, the onus is really on the individual that if you're going to be claiming if you're going to be self-identifying as indigenous, then you need to be able to back it up. And I mean, that sort of standard in an indigenous context. I mean, I have a treaty card. You know, I have a band membership as they call my band. If you have any questions, it's not an issue for me. But if somebody is claiming heritage that isn't theirs, then yeah, they're going to sort of dig their heels in and make it problematic for people to ask those questions. And it shouldn't be a problem, shouldn't be an issue. If you say you're Metis, I know I know so many Matsui people out here in Saskatchewan and I'm Metis myself and I can trace my genealogy back 10 generations on my mother's side and about five or six on my father's side. But you know his on that side, they came out through Red River and there's a lot of Sinclair's. So sort of teasing out my own relatives is a little bit challenging, but the evidence is there. I have a ton of evidence and I wouldn't have any problem in ensuring that, you know, that's not the issue. So I can understand why people would be opposed to it if they don't actually have any evidence to back up that claim. But just saying you're indigenous isn't acceptable, saying that you know, it came to you in a dream. It's like, that's just appropriation.

MG: Veldon, if somebody says that if someone falsely claims indigenous ancestry, what should the repercussions be? There are some indigenous leaders have said that there should be fines for this, that there perhaps could even be jail time for somebody who is saying that they are who they aren't. What do you think of that?

VELDON COBURN: Well, you know, I'm against really the use of the sort of carceral punishments or punitive measures and to that extent. But in academia, for example, this runs up against academic integrity is the cardinal sin of misrepresenting who you are and your credentials and when it's used to shore up your credibility within the academic and scholarly community, especially with your human subjects and research community, the ones that have basically contributed to your career. I think there should be sanctions because you've basically been dishonest about who you are, the work you do because I could never go to see my institution and claim a degree or some sort of credential that I don't have for the purposes of advancing my career in the very high standard that academia has set for itself.

MG: And those standards should be applied here.

VELDON COBURN: Right. In this particular instance.

MG: Just broadly, if you're talking about this, that those are similar standards you believe.

VELDON COBURN: Mm hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. In the winter, I remember there were calls for bringing in more punitive measures, making it the law, in the wake of Michelle Latimer. But for myself, you know, I don't I don't want to comment specifically on the Carrie Bourass case, but you know, the situation may correct itself without having to levy such harsh penalties.

MG: Raven, just in the last minute or so that we have. How should this be addressed, do you think broadly?

RAVEN SINCLAIR: Well, I think that the humiliation and shame that Dr. Brass is probably facing right now is the result of her own actions is a pretty significant punishment in and of itself. And then, being sort of ousted from her positions pending investigations, this is, it's going to be really, really challenging. So I don't know that anybody is interested in, as Veldon said, carceral punishment. But. I think that institutions could probably take a much more clear stand, you know, align themselves with our own definitions are make status definitions of what indigenous is and then ask people to verify that they are indeed who they say they are.

MG: Mm-Hmm. Hmm. It's good to speak with you both about this. I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

VELDON COBURN: Thanks so much.

RAVEN SINCLAIR: And I appreciate it. Thank you.

MG: Raven Sinclair, a professor of social work at the University of Regina in Saskatoon. She's Cree, Assinniboine, Saulteaux and Metis and a member of the George Gordon First Nation. Veldon Coburn is an assistant professor at the Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is Anishinaabe and a member of the Algonquin of the Pikawakanagan it on First Nation. You're CBC News is next. And then Suzanne Simard has spent a lifetime trying to understand the secret societies of trees, how trees work together, how they help each other, even how they speak to each other. And now people, including Hollywood stars, are paying close attention to her groundbreaking research. Suzanne Simard is here in six minutes to tell us more about the secret life of trees. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us!

Suzanne Simard on the secret societies of trees

Guests: Suzanne Simard

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

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MG: Still to come the right to unplug after work, while at the same time, Mark Zuckerberg wants us all to be plugged in even more in 30 minutes, the good, the bad and the ugly sides of life online. But first, a society of trees.

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MG: It's the first major deal of COP 26, more than 100 countries are pledging to stop deforestation by 2030. For years, we have known that cutting great swaths of forests contributes to climate change. But how much do we really know about what's going on in those forests beneath the ground?

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We used to believe that trees competed with each other for light. Suzanne Simards field would challenge the perception that we now realise that the forest is a socialist community, and trees work in harmony to share the sunlight.

MG: That is Coach Beard on the hit TV show Ted Lasso talking about Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Sarmad and her groundbreaking research on trees. And that research is having a bit of a moment. Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal announced this spring that they are adapting Suzanne Smart's memoir into a film. She is the author of Finding the Mother Tree and is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. I spoke with Suzanne Simard last week. We'll get to the serious stuff in a moment, but Ted Lasso, what is it like to be quoted in Ted Lasso?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, my my daughter's boyfriend called me right away, Bobbie Jo Love. He said, Ted Lasso just quoted, you know, I'm like, Who's Ted Lasso? And so he had to explain that to me. And then I watched the episode and I was like, I loved it. It was fantastic.

MG: And now this book is being adapted into a movie, and you'll be played by Amy Adams.

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, I know. Who knew, eh?

MG: What is that like to wrap your head around the fact that some movie star is going to be playing you?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, I mean, of course, you know, I came from the bush, so it's kind of like out there for me. But I think it's great because of what it's going to do. It's going to bring to everybody the state of our force and how we can do a better job and and how forests are absolutely essential and solving things like global change.

MG: I come from the bush. I mean, people who read this book will understand what that means. But how did you first become interested, then fascinated, then perhaps obsessed with trees or their place in the forest?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, I grew up in these old growth forests. The inland rainforests of British Columbia and my family are a family of multiple generations of horse loggers. And so it's what I knew, and I saw my grandpa, my uncles, my dad. They were selective loggers. They just took, you know what they needed to feed the family. We were very, you know, not very wealthy and lived literally in the bush. And then I became a forester myself. And when I came on the scene as a young forester in the early 1980s, what I witnessed was not at all what I grew up knowing, which was that the forest is this incredibly connected, interwoven, diverse, magnificent place. And what I was seeing was, you know, the forest company I was working for in Lilywhite was mowing down these forests, and it wasn't the only one what was happening. It was clear cutting, planting, getting rid of native plants. And so I thought, what are we doing? You know, I knew the place, the forest as a place of connexion and this was about disconnection. And so that got me started the research.

MG: There's a scene in the book in which you're working as a forester and you're plotting out the cut. This is where the trees will come down and there are some elder trees. They're sort of out of the boundary and you talk about maybe trying to preserve those trees and the person that you're working with says, What do you want to keep your job? We get those trees too. And there would be a bonus. And those trees get cut down as well. I mean, what was that like? What was going through your mind then?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, lots of conflict today. I, you know, I felt so privileged to have gotten this job in the first place, you know, because back then there were very few girls that made it into the industry. So we were newcomers on the scene. So, you know, I loved the work. It was dangerous. It was in the bush and I was part of the team and, you know, in the places I loved and I didn't want to lose that job. That was like everything I'd worked for through my degree. And and yet here I was, witnessing them falling, you know, and being part of falling these ancient trees that I grew up loving these trees. So it was a huge conflict. And so you can imagine it took me a long time to get these feelings out and and gain my voice of of what I thought was wrong with it and what we could do about it.

MG: When did you start to think how trees work together?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, you know, it was it was took many years, but what got me going really was the herbicide spraying and interior British Columbia back in the mid 80s, which was becoming an overly zealous practise to get rid of native plants because the idea was all these plants are competing with our coveted conifers that we're trying to grow to become the next crop that we can then cut down and then sell and then grow another crop and blah blah blah. So the idea that, you know, if you take all the resources in a site, water like nutrients, we can give them all to the trees and get rid of these other plants that are robbing them of that. And to me, that was wrongheaded because I knew that plants were part of a succession of a forest that you know that the huckleberries and the raspberries and the fire weed were all part of recovery of a forest from disturbance, whether it's fire or clear cutting. And then I started observing that following these spring, these plants or cutting them out, that there was increases in disease in the most productive forests. They were pathogens in the soil. So I thought to try to figure out why were these pathogens spreading prolifically through these monocultures? And that led me to the belowground world, which I'd already loved because I was a dirt eater from as a kid. And but I learnt about these fungi in the soil called Mike Highrises that were help her fungi different than the pathogens, which were parasites, and started learning that these fungi were everywhere in force, and that there have been some early studies done showing that they could actually connect pine seedlings together in the lab, and so that got me going and I looked in our productive, you know, old growth forests in B.C. and found that, yeah, they exist there. They connect the trees together and they actually pass - they're like the internet. They pass information back and forth and resources between, you know, the birch trees, which were considered to be the evil competitors and the firs, which were like the the beautiful, you know, marketable wood that birch was actually providing carbon to Douglas fir even as it was shading it out, and that this kind of collaborative and sophisticated way of interacting was what made the forest diverse and healthy.

MG: OK, so you have to explain that a little bit more for people who are thinking they're actually connected, that there's some sort of collaboration that's going on. What were the phone try doing in the forests that would help the things that were around the fungi?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah. So, Old Tree, in fact, almost all plants and all trees all over the world formed this relationship with a certain kind of fungus called the mycorrhizal fungus. So mycorrhiza literally means fungus root. And it's it's a mutualism, which means that they both benefit where where the tree or the plant provides photosynthetic energy or sugars to the fungus, which is associated with the roots of that tree. And then the fungus takes that sugar and grows its body through the soil, creates this big mycelium that cuts all the particles and pores of the soil, and pick up nutrients and water from the soil and deliver it back to the tree in exchange for this sugar energy. And the tree needs the nitrogen and phosphorus to build proteins and DNA and all the tissues and to metabolise all that energy. And so and they can't actually live without each other. They can't carry out their whole life cycle. And there are literally thousands of these fungi. I think at last count, there are something like a hundred and 55,000 species of all fungi in the world counted so far, of which a large proportion are these micro rises. And it is really this kaleidoscope of many fungi working together, connecting plants together in the forest. And it looks like and behaves a lot like an internet.

MG: That's why in the book, you say that ecosystems are similar to human societies and that they're built on relationships.

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, yeah. If you're in the forest, you know that right away, right? Because these trees are living beside each other for hundreds of years, sometimes thousands of years. They shade each other. They protect each other from frost, the host insects or pollinators that they share in common. And they share these below ground fungal networks that link them together. Now what we discovered in mapping what this network look like is that the biggest, oldest trees, which we call mother trees now are the nucleus of the forest. They link every, almost all trees together. And they also protect and provide subsidies, energy and nutrients, water to the seedlings that grow up around them and especially their own seedlings, their own kin.

MG: What do you mean they can recognise their own kin? The tree can recognise its own kin?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, it means that when a tree produces cones and sheds its seeds and some of those seeds fall around it and other seeds will, you know, fly in from maybe another neighbour, another parent further away. That initial tree that parents re can recognise which ones are their own seed. The way that we know this is we planted seeds from those parent trees, those mother trees around the tree, and then we planted seeds from stranger trees that were far away and we planted them where they could connect with the mother tree through the mycorrhizal network or not. So it was an elegant and simple experiment. And what we found is that these trees, when we labelled the trees with carbon 13 an isotope, that that tree provided more carbon 13 to its own kin seedlings. And it happened through the mycorrhizal network and it helped them survive and grow better than their neighbours.

MG: Is that why you use the terminology, the mother tree?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, that's why. And it is the nurturing of their own kin, but it's also the nurturing of the whole community. So these old trees, they don't just protect their own, they also protect the neighbours, especially if they're suffering. If they're, you know, too shaded or don't have enough nutrition or they're ill, they do actually support the community. And and this keeps the whole network the diversity, the resilience of the force strong.

MG: When you first published this research. What was the response?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah. I was so fortunate that it made it onto the pages of nature, which is one of the most prestigious journals in science. But when it actually made it to. To the the academic world and then the professional world, that's when I started to receive backlash on this paper. So there were complaints that, you know, Oh, you weren't really showing that these trees are collaborating, it's really they're just competing that there's not that much carbon moving and it wouldn't really make any difference anyway. And, Hey, we can't see these networks anyway. And and why are you just sort of challenging the Darwinian theory that competition reigns supreme in our ecosystems? Well, it turns out that collaboration we now know through many, many studies, not just my own is an absolutely essential part of natural selection. And in fact, when they looked at the human genome, we now know that we're full of all kinds of organisms that originated from other, even other kingdoms like bacteria and viruses. On the professional side, that's forestry, there was mostly it was just ignored. But there was also pushback because, you know, the forestry practise was really vested in its its policies, its ideals. There was a whole industry built up around spraying herbicides, making herbicides, clear cutting. You know, there's a lot of money involved. And so there was a lot of pushback.

MG: How much of this do you think was also that you as a woman in the world of forestry?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, certainly that was part of it. You know, being one of the few doing forestry or research in forestry, of course, you just kind of stick out and you're kind of an easier target because you don't have the the social institutional support like the men who had always been in forestry had. And of course, this discoveries of collaboration is very much has lots of female overtones to it. So there was that aspect to bringing the female voice. What we understood about how systems worked to the table was, you know, was perceived as a challenge and so all of that was definitely wrapped together.

MG: When did it start to gain acceptance? When did people realise that you were correct?

SUZANNE SIMARD: It took a long time. You know, there was a point where I just thought I would throw in the towel on looking at these connexions and study climate change instead because it was so much more obvious that what was going on. But I persisted and I got a grad student with my colleague Dan Tyrrell, and this grad student, Kevin Byler, spent his Ph.D. mapping what this network looked like below ground. Because until we did that, it seemed like nobody would really grasp it, that we had to see it to believe it. And so what he found was that all the all the trees in the forest are virtually connected together. I mean, there were a few outliers, but I think it's just because we couldn't find their fungal material and that these big old trees were the most highly connected with some of the old trees connected to 80 percent of the other trees around them. And and so once we published that map, that was a huge leap forward.

MG: It's fascinating hearing how you talk about this. This is your life's work, and when you get into it, you get really excited still and you speak quickly and you speak with great enthusiasm about it, like it's it's still to you is breathtaking.

SUZANNE SIMARD: It's I mean, it's fascinating, you know? I mean, when you uncover one little bit and that leads to the next thing in, the next thing is just like it's thrilling to learn about the forest in this way and realise that these forests are societies. And by the way, you know, I've worked a lot with Aboriginal people in British Columbia who have long seen forests and societies as connected place. So, yeah, I don't think they'll ever stop looking and asking these questions.

MG: You are applying this knowledge to what's happening right now in Fairy Creek in British Columbia, and you've been speaking out a lot about the logging of the old growth forests there. Why is that such a flashpoint for you?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Because, you know, I grew up in B.C. it was a province of old growth forests. It's now a province of clear cuts. You know, we targeted the iconic valley bottom old growth forests like Fairy Creek because they're hugely valuable on the timber market. And now we're down in British Columbia overall to the last three percent of these valley bottom forests, the really productive old growth forests. Now people, you know, argue, Oh, that number is not right, but the fact is it's still less than 10 percent. That's left of these big old, productive forests. On southern Vancouver Island, Ferry Creek is the last untouched water shed is surrounded by clear cuts that are various ages. And I know based on my research and I've been doing a lot in the last five years on the effects of clear cutting versus partial retention of old mother trees versus leaving forests intact, that when we clearcut these forests, especially the coastal forests, which, by the way, our biodiversity and carbon hotspots that we lose so much, we know that when we clear cut forests like that, we lose the lichens and the trees, which are really important. A lot of them in the nitrogen cycle, the water cycle, because they fix nitrogen, they release and absorb water that we lose, the mosses will go from maybe a dozen moss species down to none or maybe one end, and they have functions in the ecosystem too. Like they they filter water, they prevent erosion, they harbour bacteria and fungi that that do all kinds of jobs like pick up nutrients, fix nitrogen, release enzymes to to release nutrients from rocks and soil. And we lose other big iconic species like the screech owl, the the marbled that are all the species at risk in that forest. And and so I know this right. And I also know that when we clear-cut these forests that we lose not just the carbon in the trees, but the forest floor is highly disturbed and this is where the mycorrhizal network is that links the forest together. And we lose carbon in the forest floor because it gets moved around. It gets put in piles, it gets burned. We're finding that we're losing 60 percent of forest for carbon, which is the, you know, in a forest, half of the carbon is below ground. And so we're losing 60 percent of that half. And really, you know, in this era of climate change, we can't afford this. You know, we need to keep as much carbon in our force as we possibly can because forests, you know, they store 80 percent of our terrestrial carbon. If we can, you know, if we can save our old growth forests and restore our damage for us, they will take up a third of excess CO2 in our atmosphere. So it's absolutely essential that we fight for these forests. It's a moral obligation to me to keep these forests intact.

MG: How would you hold governments to better manage these forests? Because again, there are competing interests and whether it's the federal government, the provincial government in B.C., a lot of criticism around those practises. But there is money at stake, there's jobs at stake in addition to all of the things that you have laid out that are incredibly important as well. So how should that be better managed?

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah. And another element that is First Nations and ggovernment to government negotiations over rights and treaty and who's got the rights to that timber or that land. It's very complex and of course, and complex issues. There are not simple answers. But, you know, if we have a clear mind about what's at stake, which is the United Nations and the IPCC - International Panel on Climate Change has declared that we're in a climate emergency that we have until 2030 to avoid tipping points where we have runaway climate change. And to me, that means an all hands on deck, you know, that means decarbonising our energy sector and it means protecting our land and our own our forests. And sure, some jobs will be lost. But keep in mind that, you know, we've already lost huge amounts of jobs in British Columbia. We used to have, you know, the forestry sector employed about 50 percent of working people. Now it's two percent. So it's not the same for the people, right? There's so many other things going on in the economy that forestry isn't a deal breaker anymore. But climate change is. And so our governments need to make hard choices of finding alternative employment for people that do lose their jobs, if you know, if we don't- but I still think we don't need to do that. I don't think people need to lose their jobs. And here's the reason why. The first thing we need to do is we need to save these old growth forests for it, for all the carbon and biodiversity they store. And that means, you know that we can, you know, they can be still monetised through carbon credits. We still make money from eco tourism. A First Nations still make a living, can make even a better living from having healthier salmon populations, having healthier for us where they can gather food, where they can get their traditional foods from. They can also do eco tourism or indigenous eco tourism, which is like a burgeoning industry. But you can't do it if you don't have forest to go to. And so so I think there are great alternative economies that can replace those jobs and people can get jobs in these new ways. The second thing is we can shift our harvesting over to second growth forests where those forests are coming online. And the reason I say this is because we've already lost so much in those second growth forests. We've already lost half the carbon from the forest floor. We've already lost a lot of the species at risk. So, well, let's work with those and we could also manage them better so that we let the trees grow longer so they can become more biodiverse. And we have to, you know, change our management in those as well, saving the big old trees, the mother trees that exist even in those second growth forests. And then the third thing that we need to do is we need to restore forests that have been deforested right there, no longer forests. And that's where this planting of a trillion trees or as Justin Trudeau has proposed a billion trees or two billion trees in Canada. That's important. That'll bring more forests, restore the forest we've lost about a third of our forest worldwide to deforestation, we can bring those back into forests, but it's got to be done properly, right? It's got to be done so based on knowledge of local ecosystems. And so we need people on the ground to understand those forests and to help them withstand climate change because it's not going to be an easy task because they're facing more stresses from climate change.

MG: Let me just end with you. You said a really interesting phrase a moment ago, which is that we need forests to go to. In the book, you say that you can't tell if if your blood is in the trees or the trees or in your blood. This is the story of forests. It's also your own story and you tell the story in the book of how you went through treatment for breast cancer. And in the midst of that treatment, you went into the forest and a friend of yours took you out for a walk in the forest.

SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah.

MG: When you go to the forests, I mean, what do you get from that, personally?

SUZANNE SIMARD: I get totally recharged. I feel a great sense of peace. I feel my my body is healthier. I'm breathing in, you know, the air that's full of moisture. It's full of sense from the trees that are and those scents are actually the trees speaking with each other. They're communicating, they're communicating with me. I feel connected. I feel like I'm home. I know that there are many, many studies that are being done on on the health benefits of going into forests. It's called forest bathing. I think that there's health benefits of forest to having people looking after them too. It goes both ways. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's hugely healthy for us to do that. And when I went through breast cancer, I was treated with a drug called Taxol, which comes from the yewtree, which grows around my house. And I went to the trees and I thank them for what they did to heal me. And and now I'm actually giving back to them because I'm doing research on how, how to look after the neighbourhoods, the societies of the forest where they use live, so that they have a diverse community that will that will help the U.S. Produce Taxol, which is, by the way, a defence enzyme for them themselves to fight off disease. And my theory is, and my student at UVA who's working on this is that when you have a healthy community, you have good medicine and good medicine means healthy for yourself and its health for your family and all the people. And and people treat people that live around you. So, yeah,

MG: I love this book and I am really glad to talk to you about it, and it will change how I think about trees as well, which is a really powerful thing to think about. Thank you very much.

SUZANNE SIMARD: Thank you, Matt. Thank you so much.

MG: Suzanne Simard is the author of Finding the Mother Tree and a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. Well, coming up after a regional update when the workday is done, many of us know that the job does not end. Emails, phone calls hopping on a quick Zoom. The time stacks up. In 90 seconds, why countries are starting to legislate the right to disconnect and rebuild the boundaries between work and the rest of your life. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

How the right to disconnect could change your work-life balance; and Facebook becomes Meta

Guest: Lisa Belanger, James Fu, Siva Vaidhyanathan

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. OK. Cast your mind back 10, 15 years ago. For most of us, when the workday ended, it actually ended. You'd go home, you'd spend time doing whatever you wanted to do, free of the commitments of the job. Well, not so much anymore.

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[Sound: Typing and notifications]

MG: Emails, texts, the dreaded Zoom call all have pushed work hours way past nine to five, as Dolly Parton would say. It's all taken and not given. No workers really have an option to unplug, while some do, but more would like that, and now workers are finding that they're saying no more. And some lawmakers, it turns out, are actually agreeing with them. Countries like France, Italy, the Philippines have already implemented a form of right to disconnect legislation and some Canadian workers. Well, we might be next.

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Ontario cannot be a province where people burn burnout from endless work and family time comes last. We need to give our workers a break. This is why the Working for Workers Act will include giving workers the right to disconnect, whether it's setting out of office replies or turning off devices. The message is simple When you're off the clock, you're off the clock.

MG: That's Ontario's Labour Minister Monte McNaughton proposing legislation that would give workers the right to stay clocked out once the workday ends. Marta Liddiard works in the funeral industry in St. Catharines, Ontario, and the stress from having to answer emails and texts at all hours led her to step away from her sales job earlier this year. She's now working part time as a funeral service associate. Marcia, good morning.

MARTA LIDDIARD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: When you hear politicians talking about laws that are meant to help workers disconnect, what goes through your mind?

MARTA LIDDIARD: I'm excited and relieved.

MG: Relieved.

MARTA LIDDIARD: Yes, very much so.

MG: Tell me about the stress that you were under when you were not able to be off the clock in your last job.

MARTA LIDDIARD: It was you feel bombarded. We had, because of the nature of my position, we didn't have a traditional settings, so our associates were spread across the region, serving different funeral homes. So we would often well every day we would meet on a Zoom meeting. On top of that emails, and on top of that, we were asked to participate in a app so that we can have a group chat, and in this group chat it was constant. It was from as early as six in the morning to as late as 10 11 o'clock at night. There were messages constantly just ding ding ding notification if you do ification and it's just it's too much you're never off.

MG: When the phone went ding, how quickly were you expected to respond?

MARTA LIDDIARD: As soon as humanly possible. So it got to the point where I would turn the notifications off and I would come back to check in periodically and there could be anywhere from 50 to 80 messages.

MG: And if you didn't respond as soon as humanly possible, what would happen?

MARTA LIDDIARD: Eventually, we would be spoken to quite sternly about not participating, not being part of the team. And quite often the punishment was to be ignored by our manager. So when the time came that we needed help or assistance with something, we would be ignored and it would be quite some time before we can get our manager to help us again. So it was a form of punishment. Well, if you're not going to participate, then why do I- why should I help you when you need the help?

MG: You say this is at all hours? I mean, what would happen if you go for a walk or you go to the grocery store or you have a nap or something like that? I mean, it was the expectation that you would be available at all times, no matter whether it was the weekend, whether you were on holiday, would have you?

MARTA LIDDIARD: That is correct. Quite often, folks, would, you know, in the evenings you relax, you go and you start putting on the internet, you might fill out a form or questionnaire. And that in our industry would turn into a lead. So if our manager received a lead from a potential client, he- and it was, let's say, 10 o'clock at night that lead would be sent out to us and we were expected to respond. So if I happened to be up at 10 o'clock and I got that, I was expected to call that client within 15 minutes of receiving that lead. Now I personally might be shopping around online, but I don't necessarily need to hear from a salesperson at 10 o'clock at night. So it's got to be a little much.

MG: What sort of stress did that create in your own life?

MARTA LIDDIARD: Well, you're constantly on and then you're not enjoying your free time. There were times where I said to my husband, Well, I don't want to make my presence known on social media because if my manager notices, and he needs to get hold of me, then he'll say, Well, I saw you online. So why didn't you answer me, which is kind of ridiculous?

MG: What was the justification from the manager? I mean, is part of this you signed up for this job and we're helping you get sales, and so you need to be available for us to offer you that help.

MARTA LIDDIARD: That's pretty much it. The expectation is that this is a sales position and that you yes, your nine to five in the office is one thing, but if clients need you then you need to respond. And it's a little bit different. If a client reaches out to you directly, then you're in control of that situation and you can decide how you respond. You can say, Oh, hello, Mr. Client, you know, I'm not working at this time. Can this wait till the morning or is this something that needs to be addressed immediately, perhaps, there's someone else that's available type of thing, but you have the control to decide whether or not you want to work. But the expectation for management is that if they reach out to you, you need to reach out back, immediately.

MG: Just before I let you go. You're now working part time as an associate, as the phone binging less than it was before?

MARTA LIDDIARD: Much less. It's a different position altogether, so it's it's what a typical work experience would be now.

MG: Are too good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

MARTA LIDDIARD: Thank you for having me, Matt.

MG: Marta Liddiard works as a funeral service associate in St. Catharines, Ontario. Legislating that right to disconnect sounds good, but does it actually work? And if it does work, how would it work? Two employment experts are here to discuss. Lisa Belanger is a behaviour change expert and the CEO of ConsciousWorks in Canmore, Alberta. James Fu is a partner at Borden. Ladner. Gervais and employment lawyer in that firm in Toronto. They're both with us now. Good morning to you, both.

LISA BELANGER: Good morning.

JAMES FU: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Lisa, what do you make of Marcha story about her last workplace and the expectations that were put on her that yes, you're in the office nine to five, that you're available to us all day and all night?

LISA BELANGER: This is incredibly common and certainly not something limited to sales or funeral service, I've dealt with and consulted multiple different companies, insurance banking physicians across the spectrum, and this is a story that we're hearing.

MG: And so if you put in a law that says you have the right to disconnect, do you have the right to turn down those texts or emails or calls from the boss? How does that actually work? I mean, I know that those laws are in place in some parts in Europe. How do they actually work?

LISA BELANGER: So the best laws that I've seen, put in place or enforced in a way is that you're limiting when people receive emails, not when they send them, because there is this desire for flexibility right now, rightly so. And companies need to address this. So can you say, OK, it's great if you want to send emails after you put the kids to bed, but delay send them. Because what happens, that urge to respond she talked about it's called telle pressure, and that's our need or urge to respond to electronic communications. So you can email whenever you want, but you're limiting the time in which the person is receiving it. So you're not putting that public pressure or that stress on their desk. Because that is, the number one staff of employees after hours is electronic communication, and it's usually around the, number one, during work hours it's electronic communications. So everything from what we have now and message are in slack in chats and WhatsApp conversations and emails. Can we start thinking about as companies, as teams? And certainly legislation can help this on how we communicate and what is our right to some of these times?

MG: And so if I send the email, I don't push the delay, but I send it at 10 o'clock at night and I'm the boss do I get in trouble if there's this law in place?

LISA BELANGER: So I think the biggest thing is not the trouble because we've all done it, you know, intending to delay said that and I send it at three o'clock in the morning, but it's more around what is the culture and what is accepted and does that person actually know they have permission not to respond. So when we say you need to set your own personal boundaries, but then you reward them if they don't. So thank you for getting that report to me so quickly. From a behaviour change perspective, there needs, it needs to be talked about extensively in groups, from the leaders, from the companies. And then as we go further than that so that people understand the expectation and that it's reasonable. So, for example, work with companies that that as you can email from 6:00 in the morning till s6:00 at night. So that's 12 hours in the day, but you can't email around that.

MG: James Fu, you've been listening in. What do you make of this kind of legislation? Does it work? Does it get to the heart of the matter?

JAMES FU: Yeah, I think I think the challenge is it it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, which is workplace culture, right? And workplace culture. I think you have to change it from within versus having, you know, a regulatory piece of legislation that imposes on on companies. I mean, no one wants to be told what to do. And I think in order for a company to really change its culture, there has to be buy in from the top. And and legislation is, as I think, you know, a very difficult way to to to change that type of behaviour.

MG: Do we have laws in place now that protect workers when it comes to overreach from their employer?

JAMES FU: We do. We have we have overtime laws, right? In terms of, you know, in almost every province and every province, there's overtime laws that that protect workers in terms of overtime work at certain thresholds, daily in some provinces and some provinces, it's weekly. And in terms of, you know, occupational health and safety legislation, there's also that in place that that does protect workers also vacation entitlements. There's a whole, I would say, framework that's already in place that that protects employers and employees.

MG: This is about the nature of work in some ways. I mean, I started off saying, you know, 10 to 15 years ago, you finished work and you went home. This is not 10 to 15 years ago. We live in a different time, so take a listen to this. This is Jane Addams, an accountant in Kingston, Ontario, speaking about the issue of flexibility.

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I would take email while I was on vacation only so I could direct someone to manage it in my absence. Not so that I could sit and work on vacation. I needed that flexibility. So this new law seems to say to employers there's no flexibility allowed. Once someone's off the clock, then you can't contact them. And if a person's choosing to work these flexible hours, how do we balance that with the respect that's required to say someone needs downtime or someone needs to disengage?

MG: Lisa Belanger, how do you figure that? If somebody doesn't want to work the traditional nine to five, how could these laws still allow for that flexibility?

LISA BELANGER: It's not about when you work, it's about when you're trying to make other people work. So the laws, the way that I've worked with them in the past has simply been, you don't have the right this stress is somebody else's plate. So you can send the emails, but it's just a delay send to agreed upon hours, or you simply have a conversation. For example, if you are a leader with your team that says, I work from seven to nine o'clock at night because it works for me. I do not want you to look at this picture, you know, off your phone or take. Make sure you're not responding to the communication, but the the vacation thing. That's a very North American culture thing. In Europe, if you're on vacation, you're on vacation. You have the right to that and you have the right to disconnect. Choosing to go in and manage your emails to direct them. In my opinion, that's a bad system. You should be able to completely disconnect.

MG: And offload that to somebody else.

LISA BELANGER: Or have a great away message. Yeah, right. This is here's the people to contact. Our away messages in North America versus Europe or comically different. Where it's like, here's my personal cell phone number and I'll be back at this exact time. And in Europe, they're like, I'm gone. That's it. So being able to address that in some way, shape or form that works for your team and it works for your company that's taking into account that if we're telling people to set their own personal boundaries, they will not. We're teaching people how it works in our culture. What's needed to succeed.

MG: I want to play one more comment from the accountant Jane Adams.

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Many of my clients are outside of Ontario. If I wanted to send an email to someone in the U.K. or someone in the U.S., I might be allowed to do that, but I might not be allowed to send something to another colleague in Ontario. How does that impact the ability to work on large projects where you're now in a global economy where teams can comprise of people outside your jurisdiction?

MG: James who is it possible for jobs with a global nature to embrace something like this? It's not just about time zones, but it's about, to your point, the culture of work in some ways.

JAMES FU: Yeah, I think it's quite difficult, right? Because you start setting in certain parameters to say yes and this part of the world, you can send the email at this time. You know, in that part of the world, you know, you can't. And you know, it's more, you know, in addition to regulation for for the for the employers, it's also more regulation for the employees in the sense of trying to manage when they can send out, when they can, when they should send it delayed, you know, delayed email or not. And then trying to figure out all that, all the new rules that apply to that. I think, you know, it detracts from that from the flexible nature of the service industry, which, you know, to your point, you know, 10, 20 years ago, you know, but I think we were transitioning really well into into a service industry. And now we're in the midst of the full service industry and that entails certain, I think, particularly depending on a person's role within a company, there's certain expectations and then there's certain, you know, response times that are expected.

MG: You're a lawyer for a big firm in Toronto. Could you ever imagine a policy like this applying your workplace?

JAMES FU: I think so. With all things law, it's one of those where, you know, in terms of applying at the workplace, I can see, I can see a policy. And in fact, you know, at our firm, we do have a policy that that our leadership is and my comment about culture. Our leadership has embraced and set out general guidelines in terms of what's expected in terms of after hours work, you know, try not to send emails from certain periods of time. And then also, on Fridays, try to make sure that there's time to to to do work and not set up too many meetings because it can be a meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting meetings on Fridays. And then you're into the weekend and then you're working on the weekends. So yeah, you know, I think I think that's a great example in the sense that really, I think it is part of the if the company has adopted the culture and really it's about education, I think it's part of, you know, especially now there's there's, in all industries, there's a shortage of labour and there's, you know, relatively high attrition compared to a few years ago. And I think, you know, enlightened employers, when they look at their their staff complement, they will think to themselves, Well, you know, it's going to cost me a lot more to hire a new employee versus retaining my current employees. So what conditions can I create to retain them?

MG: Lisa, in the remaining minute that we have, I mean, in the absence of a law like this and you've hinted at this part of it is having a good out of office message. But what can we do? To ensure that the right practises are in place so that we don't burn ourselves out, burn our co-workers out and feel as though people feel like they need to respond if I send some email at five o'clock in the morning.

LISA BELANGER: I think it really comes down to and I'm kind of reiterating what was said is that it's it is culture, but it's up to each individual leader to have these conversations and to create a policy within the smaller team and then certainly within the company or the industry. I've seen really great out of authors. I've a really great e-signatures, managing expectations and responses because what we do, we train people on how quickly to respond to us with how could we respond to them? But I've seen everything from I got emails at seven o'clock to I will respond within 24 hours. And all these are pretty acceptable practises in most industries. We are just managing that expectation. And then as a leader, what are you rewarding? So it comes down. People are going to continue to do what they're rewarded for. So if you're you're thinking people for the emails after hours of for working long hours, this has been valued and continued. So we do have to have this behavioural shift. And that's one of the reasons I do like the conversation around the legislation, at least, is raising this topic and getting this conversation started.

MG: Thank you for both taking the time to speak with us about this valuable information that listeners can digest themselves. Thank you very much.

JAMES FU: Thank you, Matt.

LISA BELANGER: Thank you.

MG: Lisa Belanger, behaviour change expert. We reached her in Canmore. James Fu, a lawyer and employment lawyer in Toronto. Your thoughts on this? You can send us an email on the clock, not off the clock. Do you have a right to disconnect at your workplace to feel as though you're on the clock all the time? And if so, how do you manage that in your daily life? There's work, and then there's the rest of your life. Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

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It is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do to reflect who we are and what we hope to build. I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta.

MG: It started as a place to rank female Harvard students on their attractiveness. Now it's creating a different kind of universe. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially welcomed the world to the new metaverse. No secret, perhaps, that Facebook has endured much scrutiny of late and paid a price on the world markets, but really a name change. Is that enough to make everyone forget about the litany of charges levied at Facebook? Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media How Facebook Disconnects US and Undermines Democracy. Siva, good morning.

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Hey, good morning to you. Thanks for having me.

MG: Why is Facebook or Metta, as some people may be calling it doing this?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Well, look, we're still going to have a service called Facebook, an app called Facebook that's not changing the overall company. We'll have a new name, and it's it's matter. It's just like Google a few years ago put a company over its roof called Alphabet, but it still remains Google. So the real key here is that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to signal what has been his long term vision for quite some time. His long term vision is to take the Facebook way of of surveilling us, monitoring us, monetising our behaviour and managing our behaviour at an extended into all areas of life, beyond our phones, beyond our computers.

MG: And that's what the Metaverse is going to be?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Yeah. And it's going to do this through a combination of what's called virtual reality, where you sort of plug in and put on a headset and immerse yourself in some imaginary world, a cartoon like world that will hopefully if they do it right from their point of view, seem a lot more striking and realistic than a cartoon. And what's known as augmented reality, the notion that you could, for instance, put on a pair of glasses. And as you walk around the world, you would see data and information about where you are or what you're looking at, who you're encountering, right? So you can imagine if you and I met each other on the street and we're each wearing special Facebook augmented reality glasses. I would see your name, the mutual friends. We have the basics about your life so that I would have a conversation prompt thus liberated from this nagging memory that I have, right? That would be outsourcing all these things like who's important to me? What's important? What matters to this company? So when you combine virtual reality and augmented reality, and ideally this is their vision, break down the boundaries between them. The idea is that we would have a consciousness that would live within the dataflow of Mark Zuckerberg's imagination and his values and his sense of doing things. Now, everything I'm saying sounds very science fiction.

MG: It certainly does. Yes.

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: And accidental. I mean, it comes from science fiction. It's the idea of a metaverse has circulated in various science fiction works for more than 20 years. And and this is the stuff that Mark Zuckerberg has been inspired by and for a long time. So this main change is not a public relations move. It is very much a declaration of where his imagination has been for some time.

MG: You've called this the operating system of our lives. How far out is the metaverse. When when will people live? Should they decide, you know, that they want to get involved in it? When would they actually be able to step into this thing?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: I don't know that there's going to be a date when we all wake up and say, Well, we're in the metaverse because the idea here is to incrementally introduce devices, platforms, technologies and ways of living into our lives. And by the way, Facebook is not the only company doing this. Facebook is the only company that's renamed itself in this spirit and uses the term metaverse overtly. But Google's doing the same thing. Apple is doing the same thing, Microsoft's doing the same thing. What they're trying to do is incrementally embed themselves in our lives and thus embed our bodies and minds in their systems, in their data systems. And they're doing this by selling us thermostats like Nest thermostats that are part of a smart home. They're doing it by selling us these little devices that sit on our counters and play music and respond to our voice commands and track everything we do and say in the room. They're doing this through a variety of apps on our phones. They're doing it by selling us Apple Watches, which monitor our heart rates and our location, et cetera. These are these are all small moments of convenience that convince us that we need this next thing and we drop a few hundred a few thousand dollars on the next thing. But over time, they're creating this lattice, this network of data flow and each of these companies hopes to be the winner and thus ultimately the monopolist in surveilling us and tracking everything we do and turning it into their own corporate features.

MG: Facebook's entry into this comes at a time when the company is in an ocean of hot water right now. And I mean, you said you know that in some ways this is about controlling our lives. There are, for example, regulators who think that and perhaps now is the time that Facebook has less control. How is this going to fit in to the troubles that Facebook is in? Is it going to be likely to be able to continue this kind of work, given the fact that there are some people who want to break this company up or at least give it less power?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: I mean, I think that Facebook is in a mess of hot air, not hot water. I actually think that all of this bad publicity, all this negative messaging about Facebook is going to have almost no effect on the company. We've not seen it affect the bottom line at all, and we're talking about five years of bad publicity. It's not just the last two weeks. We've not seen it affect the growth of Facebook usage around the world. We've not seen it affect Mark Zuckerberg's own vision for his company, nor the behaviour within the company. Basically, the market has not told him that he's doing anything wrong. And his entire career, every time he's gotten blowback or friction from anywhere, he's just let it wash through and moved on with his vision and been rewarded by the market every single time. So I see no reason why Facebook should be or would be dissuaded by the fact that really what would to any other company be devastating public relations problems are going to affect them or even having a misstep. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg loses any sleep over anything that's appearing in The Wall Street Journal or anything that's appearing in Ottawa or in Washington or in London or in Brussels. So regulators talk a lot about what they might do, but there are no current tools that would address the problem that Facebook has brought us, nor any of the new problems that a metaverse type agenda would introduce. We are just nowhere near that. We are using 18th and 19th century tools to try to confront a 21st century monster.

MG: Whether we want this or not is another matter entirely. Perhaps we'll talk about that in the metaverse and future. In the meantime, Siva, thank you very much.

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: My pleasure.

MG: Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media How Facebook Disconnects US and Undermines Democracy. The Metaverse awaits. In the meantime, we have radio that is The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q, a familiar voice joining Tom Power Rick Mercer. He has a new memoir out. It's called Talking to Canadians. You'll hear Rick ranting coming up in a few moments on CBC Radio one. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

The Current Transcript for November 2, 2021

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

University of Saskatchewan academic faces questions about her claims to Indigenous identity

Suzanne Simard on the secret societies of trees

How the right to disconnect could change your work-life balance; and Facebook becomes Meta

Thursday November 2, 2021 Full Transcript

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