As COVID-19 vaccines for kids get closer, experts weigh up how to reassure parents

Guests: Fallon Jones, Dr. Cora Constantinescu, Dr. Kashif Perzada

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JAGMEET SINGH: Reconciliation is sometimes as simple as basic respect for the first people of this land. Reconciliation is more than a box to check. It is the very keystone of Canada reaching its potential.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I see Canadians standing together on the path of reconciliation.

MATT GALLOWAY: For years, politicians have been talking about reconciliation between Canada and indigenous peoples. For two decades, Jesse Wente, has been talking about how difficult that will be in 30 minutes. The Anishinaabe broadcaster and arts leader is here to speak about family truth and his powerful new memoir, Unreconciled. Also this morning, to suggest that these are trying times for Jason Kenney would be putting it politely. The Alberta premier all but declared the pandemic over, then saw his health care system buckle under a fourth wave, reversed course on a vaccine passport, became a villain in the federal election and yesterday fired his health minister. The political fate of Jason Kenney in an hour and later.

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[Sound: Birds chirping]

MG: Name those birds and if you can't, well, there's an app for that, and it's great. Shazam for birds coming up with school underway and cases rising, though, we start with the push for a covid vaccine for kids. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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MG: Covid-19 has as many public health officials say become the pandemic of the unvaccinated in Canada, and that does not just mean adults who are holding out on getting their shots, school age children who are not yet eligible for vaccines are also still vulnerable. But that could change soon. Data from a clinical trial from Pfizer and BioNTech this week shows that their vaccine is both safe and effective in kids age five through 11. And that could help parents breathe a bit easier, especially with school in session again. But as with everything involved in this pandemic, it's not so simple. Fallon Jones is the mother of two year old William and five year old Sophie joins me now from Halifax following. Good morning.

FALLON JONES: Good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm great, thanks. Sophie is in grade one, and given the fact that she is in school right now, how do you feel about, you know, her being in class in the midst of this fourth wave of the pandemic?

FALLON JONES: Oh, you know, I feel in Nova Scotia we've been doing a really good job managing cases in the school. So at this time, I'm confident and I'm comfortable in the in the schools ability to keep her safe. Now, that being said, we watch it day by day. And if case numbers go up or if there are, you know, indications of spread in schools and we will, you know, of course, make our decision to and whether or not we will continue to send to in person classes. But that's something we're just taking one day at a time.

MG: Given that and as you say that, you're taking it day by day, if Health Canada were to approve the vaccine, how would you feel about Sophie getting the shot up?

MG: Incredibly comfortable. We've already had discussions about that when she becomes available. And she's actually excited to be able to get the covid-19 vaccine and protect herself a little bit more against this virus. My husband and I both are double vaccinated and we feel very comfortable with the science and see the opportunity to get her vaccinated.

MG: She's excited about it.

FALLON JONES: She is excited about it.

MG: Are you surprised by that? I mean, kids and vaccines can be I say this as a parent, kind of a tricky thing sometimes when they go to get the shot. Tell me a bit more about her.

FALLON JONES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when she heard that there was a covid-19 vaccine for adults, she was disappointed that she couldn't be the first one to get the vaccine. So so we told her, you know, maybe you'll be the first kid. But she understands that the vaccine is a way to protect herself and to protect others that might not be able to get the vaccine. And so she's just a very smart girl. And it's surprising. Yeah. Like you said, that she's eager to get a shot, but she knows that it's short term pain for long term gain.

MG: What kind of conversations are you having with other parents about this vaccine and the possibility of younger kids being eligible for the shot?

FALLON JONES: Well, you know, there's some controversy about, I think, getting the shot to young kids and a lot of the conversation, a lot of the narratives that I'm hearing as well, I don't know what's in the vaccine, so I don't want to put that in my head. And I typically respond with, well, did you know what was in the vaccines that they had as babies? Because in general, the answer is no. I think we trusted our doctors then and we trusted the science then. And we need to do the same with this vaccine. Unfortunately, with social media and everything out there, it's really easy to find scary information. And as parents, you know, you're nervous and you're apprehensive, obviously, about any risks. But, you know, we have to weigh the pros and the cons here. And I think that this is a good opportunity to protect them against a potentially deadly virus.

MG: Do you have any hesitation about it?

FALLON JONES: I don't.

MG: Are you surprised this long into the pandemic that other parents would have that hesitation? I mean, it's been really tough. The last 18 months plus have been have been difficult for for everyone. But parents really have seen their lives and the lives of their kids turned upside down.

FALLON JONES: Yeah, absolutely. And I completely respect and understand how there would be some fear associated with it — I mean, this is also new, the whole situation is scary, but we're just we have to take it one day at a time and then trust the science that develops. And thousands of adults have received this vaccine. And, you know, I think we've proven that it is safe and it is effective. And we need to to take that into consideration when making our decisions about vaccinating our children.

MG: And just finally, before I let you go, what would it mean for your whole family? I mean, you have a two year old son as well.

FALLON JONES: Yeah, I do, and, you know, honestly, with her being in public school and being exposed to a lot more people on The Daily Show, I think having her vaccinated and less likely to bring home a virus that could potentially, you know, impact my two year old. One thing that I always take into consideration that my son has grown up in this pandemic, essentially, and he hasn't been exposed to as many viruses as other children. And my concern would be, would he be impacted by covid-19 more negatively than other kids who have more of an immune system built up from being exposed to all of these, you know, colds and flu growing up? So it would certainly it would certainly take a weight off of our shoulders knowing that that risk is lower. And yeah. So to protect him as well.

MG: Fallon, I'm grateful to have the chance to talk to you. Thank you very much. Mornings are busy. I know. So I am glad that you stole a little bit of time to to speak with you. Thanks so much.

FALLON JONES: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

MG: Fallon Jones is the mother of two children under the age of 12. She was in Halifax. And as she mentioned, parents have a lot of questions right now about how covid might affect their kids and about the vaccine. Dr. Cora Constantinescu fields a lot of those questions. She's a paediatrician and infectious disease doctor at Albertus Children's Hospital in Calgary. She also works at the vaccine hesitancy clinic there. Doctor, good morning.

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What was your reaction after hearing this announcement from Pfizer that this vaccine for younger children could be on the horizon?

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: You know, it's hopeful. I felt hope I had heard from so many parents, like Helen mentioned, that they're worried about their kids, especially if school is under way. And when you look here in Alberta, I'm talking to you from Calgary and the numbers that are higher in kids than ever before and parents just want to make the best decision they can for their kids to protect them. So they're seeing this as a way to directly protect their kid and not hold them back from school and life. So it's helpful for a lot of parents. It's hopeful for me. I'm a parent as well, and it's what we were expecting get. It's on a good timeline. However, we haven't actually seen any of the data. And of course, this hasn't been reviewed by Health Canada yet.

MG: And I want to get to that in just a moment. The context is important. I mean, you mentioned what's happening in Alberta. Across the country, kids are back in school. In the absence of a vaccine. What is the potential danger to kids now?

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: Well, you know, it's really interesting because in places like Alberta, where our numbers are very high and our system is strained, we're seeing two main issues with covid. So one is the direct effect of covid. We're seeing more kids. Kids as a group now are the most affected demographic in terms of infection. So we're seeing the direct effects of covid on children. And we know that that can range from mild disease to respiratory illness to being hospitalised, having a multisystem inflammation to ending up in ICU. But we're also seeing this direct cost, this indirect cost of this pandemic to them. We're seeing mental health issues, learning loss, issues of socialisation, and then in places, again, like Alberta, that we're seeing some of the health reduced to some extent as we're cancelling surgeries for kids. So there's a very clear impact on our children.

MG: You work in a vaccine hesitancy clinic in Calgary. What resistance are you already seeing to this vaccine?

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: What we're seeing mostly is a lot of anti-vaccine rhetoric, and especially on social media and parents, you know, whenever they come to the vaccination decision, parents approach it from a safety perspective. So what we're seeing is a lot of blown out of proportion of fear and safety concerns on especially on social media and the anti vaccine rhetoric and a lot of misconstrued science. And and and then the other the other issue that parents are exposed to is this the sense that the fact that Corbett is not a big threat to children. And so what we're actually seeing is this huge polarisation of the pro-vaccine and the anti-vaccine crowd. And then the parents are caught in the middle, scared and worried about their kids trying to make the best decision they can, you know, being pulled in in in one of these directions in a very emotional way. So right now, we're just seeing a lot of fear and anxiety and just a lot of emotion around this this vaccine.

MG: And so in your work, what do you say? I mean, this is early, but as you say, you're already seeing a movement against kids getting vaccinated. So what do you say to help unpack some of that rhetoric?

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: You know, I've thought about this a lot because I have three kids under 12, so this is my personal demographic as well. And the way parents need to approach this is is it's about personal protection first. It's about protecting their kids directly, looking out for them and and wanting to return them to a normal life and normal activities. And you know what's interesting to me, that people compare death in children to death in adults. But it's not a correct comparison because we need to to compare this to what other things kill children. If you look at in the US, for example, prior to any of the covid measures, the flu mortality is nowhere near in children as the covid mortality. We're seeing more kids having died of covid in a shorter period of time than the flu, and that's with all the public health measures in place. And so when we compare it to adults, the mortality is low. But we compared to other vaccine preventable diseases, it's not low. And typically in children, we have a very low threshold for mortality in kids, as we should consider cancer, for example, you know, we go above and beyond to save children's lives. So why should it be any different? And then the other thing that I really want parents to think about and, you know, I actually really dislike using mortality is an example because it's such a crude measure of kids health. You know, we need to look out for their mental health, the family well-being, their socialisation, the learning loss that kids have had. So this, in addition to life, is what we're trying to protect with a vaccine.

MG: What more do you want to see? You mentioned the data. What more do you want to see from the vaccine manufacturers that would speak to parents who might be pro vaccine, but they have concerns. They are risk tolerance is different for our kids than it is for ourselves.

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: Absolutely, and you're right on on that matter. You know, we often have parents who are fully vaccinated themselves who may be hesitant about their kids. So right now, we haven't seen much of the data at all. We've just seen really an announcement. We know that they had over 2000 people, kids involved. They were five to 11. We know they used a third of the dose. And then we know that they said that compared to the 16 to the 25 year olds, the side effects and and the immune responses were comparable. But we don't actually know, you know, the health of the data. And all this needs to go before Health Canada. Well, it's a very meticulous and dedicated process of looking at the safety data. But also what I know parents want is they want to know that the real world with the vaccine is doing in the real world in those 12 and older is being considered, especially when it comes to rare side effects like myocarditis. So parents want to know that not only is Health Canada going to look at this data, that's the new data that's coming out, but also that what the vaccine does in the real world is also considered. And that is exactly what Health Canada does. So they look at everything. Plus they monitor the real world evidence of the vaccine already on the market. And then, of course, they make this available, the safety and efficacy data. And parents really want that transparency. And I would say what we've noticed that even in those parents who may not trust government or health agencies, they do trust the health care providers and and they want to be supported by the health care provider as they make this decision. So all that goes into this big, big, you know, vaccination choice.

MG: You have an important role in this. And we'll talk again as this moves forward. In the meantime. Doctor, thank you very much for this morning.

DR. CORA CONSTANTINESCU: Thanks for having me.

MG: Dr. Cora Constantinescu is a paediatrician, an infectious disease doctor at Alberta Children's Hospital. She also works at a vaccine hesitancy clinic in Calgary. All eyes, as the doctor mentioned, are on Health Canada now to see if vaccines for under Twelve's will get that official green light. We did request to speak with Dr. Supriya Sharma, Health Canada's chief medical officer of health. She was not available, but Health Canada did tell us that at this time, no submission has been received for approval of any covid-19 vaccine in children under 12 years of age. Dr. Kashif Perzada is an emergency physician in Toronto watching this closely. Doctor, good morning to you.

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Pfizer Canada says it plans to provide Health Canada with data showing its covid-19 vaccine works for children in a bid to seek authorisation as early as possible. What, in your mind is as early as possible?

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: Well, I think it needs to happen yesterday. What happens with these processes is that Pfizer usually submits interim data to Health Canada. So they have data already that they could start. And I think, you know, they need to be more transparent and public about this process. They do rolling reviews, interim orders and things like that. So I think they can get started with that. And then what happens after Health Canada approves it is that year the National Committee on Immunisation has to give a recommendation. So I'm calling for all of these process to be speeded up and done very transparently so that we can get these vaccines approved and in kids arms quickly.

MG: How do you do that in a way that strikes the right balance? I mean, too slow could mean more illness, but too fast speaks to the issue that Dr. Constantinescu was just talking about. When you're you might have public trust that's compromised because you're moving quickly.

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: So there's a lot of wheels that have to sort of go into motion to get this done. The authorisation and review will take a few weeks, but we can prepare it in the meantime. For that, we could get doses ready. We can get the mass vaccination sites ready. We could prepare family doctors and pharmacists to really get ramped up and get this started because, you know, with exponential spread and we have this already in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, you're having it. You're going to have thousands more kids infected with additional day. But for sure, like we have to do it safely. But the trends are that this vaccine is most likely safe. Five and a half billion doses have been given all over the world. More than 40 percent of everyone on the planet has been vaccinated safely. There was a concern with myocarditis, which is a heart inflammation condition in adolescents, but they didn't report any cases in the newest data that came from Pfizer. And covid causes that condition 10 to 100 times more if you get infected. So it really is a non-issue. And I suspect in the trends show that it won't be an issue with kids

MG: part of this. You've used the word transparency a couple of different times. Part of this is about the process. And you think back to what happened in the spring when the National Advisory Committee on Immunisation said AstraZeneca, that's a safe vaccine. Go ahead and get it. Canadians went and stood up and got the vaccine. Then they said that, you know, Canadians less at risk could wait for a preferred vaccine than they stopped it entirely. How important is being clear and concise to create the trust that's needed within the public?

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: I think that was an example of the system actually working really well. And NACI caught the problem with AstraZeneca earlier than other regulators and switched people to the safer MRNA vaccines. And they also approved the vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds faster than the FDA in America. And it's also proven to be fairly safe. And our rates in that population are some of the highest in the world. And you're seeing that school opening is gone very safely. And most of the country like Ontario, Quebec, in the Maritimes, rates haven't exploded yet because possibly that we approve those vaccines faster and it's proven very safe. So I think NACI kind of really being ahead of the game in many ways. And I just hope they continue this trend and really speed up the process now. But do it in a safe way, obviously. But I think overall it's been successful for them.

MG: What are they up against? I mean, you've written about what you call a doget anti vaccination campaign.

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: So I think, you know, we need to emphasise the safety I think your earlier speaker and guest had some really excellent points. I think we need to emphasise that this is a safe vaccine. The covid is much worse. If you look at the U.S., numbers of 200000 children are getting infected there every week and 20 plus children are dying every week there. One out of every 100 children will need to be in hospital and possibly one out of every 50 will get long term covid symptoms. So the stakes are high. Covid is not harmless in children. And the vaccine from the data that we've seen is many, many, many, many times safer. And I think reassure people we need to reassure people that billions and billions of doses of the vaccine have been given out safely all across the world and will go safely with children as well.

MG: Do you see this being rolled out through schools? I mean, school boards in past have been involved in vaccination campaigns. Is that the way to move forward this time around?

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: Yes, that would be an excellent idea to mobilise, but it would take planning. And, you know, if we want to get this done by Halloween, which is when approval will probably come, then we need to involve schools as well. And if, you know, Pfizer has to make vials for paediatric doses, that you can just use adult vials and pull out one third of the dose and it's the same vaccine. So we can eally get this done. Once that approval comes, we should, you know, pull out all the stops and get these shots in the little arms as quickly as possible.

MG: Your suggestion is that by Halloween, this could start.

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: It's possible that if they do, if we go by earlier approval processes and when the FDA releases their data, it's very possible that by Halloween, our children from five to 11 can get the vaccine.

MG: Just in the last 30 seconds that we have, if we don't get the messaging around this right, what's at stake?

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: Well, I think, you know, the issue is every child in every school will be exposed to this virus and they're going to bring it home to unvaccinated relatives who there are still numerous enough to overwhelm our health care systems. And you're seeing this already happened in Alberta first. It'll happen elsewhere unless we get this cohort vaccinated and protect them and protect all the adults around them.

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

DR. KASHIF PERZADA: Thank you. Have a great morning.

MG: Dr. Kashif Perzada, emergency physician in Toronto, co-founder of Masks for Canada, a group that advocates for masking vaccines, rapid tests and improved ventilation. Your CBC News is next.

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Sorry is great, but what do we do to actually correct and fix the things that are broken because there is so much broken. Get to discussions about land sovereignty? About language? Things that are actually going to lead to true reconciliation.

MG: That is the voice of Jesse Wente speaking with me about reconciliation five years ago. He now has a new book on that same topic. I'll speak with Jesse Wente in six minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current one CBC Radio One.

Jesse Wente on family, truth and Indigenous resistance

Guest: Jesse Wente

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

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MG: Still to come, the federal election may have changed little in Ottawa, but it seems to have put the cracks in Alberta provincial politics under the microscope. We'll talk about the growing pressure on Premier Jason Kenney in 30 minutes. But first, is there a road to reconciliation?

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MG: Jesse Wente has long pushed for indigenous artists in this country to be able to share their stories more broadly. For 20 years, he was a film critic and columnist on CBC Radio. He was a programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival. He was named the first executive director of the indigenous screen office and last year became the chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, the only indigenous person to ever hold that position. Now he is telling his own story of finding his place in indigenous culture and his political voice. His new book is Unreconciled: Family Truth and Indigenous Resistance. Should say that I've known Jesse and worked with him for many, many years and some of that work is actually referenced in this book. Jesse Wente, good morning.

JESSE WENTE: Good morning, Matt. So nice to speak to you again.

MG: Congratulations on this book.

JESSE WENTE: Oh, thanks. Thanks. I appreciate that.

MG: Let me ask you first, just briefly about what we've all been through in the last five weeks, and that's a federal election.

Speaker 3: What do you think another Liberal minority will mean for indigenous people in this country?

JESSE WENTE: Well, I mean, so I should say first that as chair of a Crown Corporation, I'm supposed to be nonpartisan. So sort of regardless of the the outcome, I think. Whatever political party was going to take power, I think First Nations meeting anyway, what people were likely looking for further of issues that frankly sort of transcend partisan politics because they speak to really the foundation of the country and its origins. So, you know, regardless of the outcome, I think the expectation is that we need to move more rapidly to resolve some of these issues. And as I like to say, I think we need to see any government look to support indigenous lives and culture and language with the same vigour and abundance that they supported the denial of those things for our people. And so that's a that is a multigenerational multi billion, if not trillion dollar effort that this country needs to ultimately engage in. And I don't think there's any election that can actually contain those sorts of issues, nor are they the purview of one political party. They're the purview of the nation writ large.

MG: I want to come back to that towards the end of our conversation, if I can. But let's talk about this book. This is a book that is very personal. It is about lives. It's about your family's lives, your lives, the lives in your community, you dedicated to your grandmothers. And I know that your grandmother, Norma in particular, was a big presence in your life and a big presence in your heart. Tell me just a little bit about her.

JESSE WENTE: So Norma Moiwaskey was born in [unintelligible], which is now called the Serpent River First Nation, which is in Cutler, Ontario, which is on the north shore of Lake Huron. It's where her family has spent most of their lives. Her mother and father, Alex and Maggie Molaskey, were leaders in the community at the time. She was born in the late 20s. And, you know, if you if you remember history, that meant that she had to go to a residential school, which she did in Spanish Ontario, five of her eight siblings would attend the schools there until, my great grandparents sort of figured out that the schools weren't a place for their children and they ended up moving off the out of the community or off the reserve. And I've always found it amusing that they moved literally across the street like it was- it was. But that was enough to keep the Indian agent from coming for the children. So she was in the school from the time she was six until she was 16. She got out. She ended up moving to Toronto, where she worked as a maid, which was really what the schools trained most girls to do was to be domestic workers or servers. And then she spent most of her her working life. She worked at the Albany Club, which is the oldest, I believe it's the oldest private club in all of Canada. Matt, founded by, somewhat ironically, Johnny McDonald. She worked there for many, many years as a server. She loved it there. She was a huge force in my life. She lived with us after my grandfather died. She lived with us for a number of years. And, yeah, she was the person we went to after school because my parents were working. She was so much, and both my grandmothers, that was true, not just normal, but also Barbara. They were really important people in our family, matriarchs, to be sure. And to me, it felt like this book was for them, you know, that they had such an impact, profound impact on my life, there's so much of the reason why I am where I am today that, yeah, I wanted to honour them this way. And, you know, people like Norma don't often get that. So, yeah, I'm hoping she's pleased with how it's all worked out.

Speaker 3: We turn to our elders today in many ways to learn who we are and to figure out who we are over to them. And you say in the book, I mean, you always felt proud to be indigenous, but you almost never felt indigenous enough. What did you mean by that?

JESSE WENTE: Well, I mean, we had always known we were Anishinaabe or Ojibway and that we were very proud of it, it was never anything that was hidden in the house. But because we like so many people, you know, when my grandmother got out of the residential school, she didn't really live for much any longer in the community. She moved to Toronto. There was an incredible amount of shame that she had around who she was. And so my family, that part of the family didn't grow up in community. We grew up I grew up in East York and Toronto. And so there was and we would go back we would go to Serpent River when I was a kid to visit family, of course. And I was very aware that these were two different places. And yet somehow I was meant, meant or supposed to belong to both of them. And yet that has been. You know, an ongoing challenge, and I think that's true for a lot of First Nations meeting, and you had folks who grow outside their community and yet still have fairly deep connexions to it that you can feel a bit outside of it. And yet you can also feel outside of the city, the community and the city, which I would say was also true for me. So it can you leave you in a bit of an identity quandary and it's one, you know, suggestive of from the title of the book that I'm still unpacking. But, you know, the one thing that I I understand now, Matt, is that that is all purposeful. You know, the idea that a member of a First Nations community might not feel that they're Indian enough for that community, that is pretty much a direct result of colonialism and an outcome that colonialism was seeking, that that our communities would be so damaged. That's the point of residential schools, right? Is not, yes, it's to harm my grandmother and to make her not part of the community. But in many ways, it's more so to make sure that I wasn't part of the community, that my children wouldn't be, because when you centre your attacks on the family and on children, that is meant to be a multigenerational effect. You're trying to alter things over many, many years. And so my discomfort or my struggles to fully reconcile my own identity and my place in the community, that is a direct outcome of what Canada is and what it was, a direct comment to occur. And for so many of us, it's the struggle we're engaged in is trying to navigate all of those waters in 2021.

MG: And in many ways, that's what this book is about. I mean, and that's the purpose of this book is to to help, as you say, navigate those waters.

JESSE WENTE: at least for me. I mean, I hope that others might find something in the words. But for me, it is an expression of what that journey has been.

MG: Part of that journey, as you say, has you growing up in the big city and you're a big city kid and you love baseball, you love basketball, you love movies as well. I want to play something. This is a great moment in Canadian acting. This is from the show Ray Bradbury presents.

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Welcome back to the playground. Charlie.

MG: Jesse Wente, how old were you when you were menacing poor Charlie in that scene?

JESSE WENTE: It was probably about 10 or 11 or maybe a little older than that. I didn't get a line in that. I did get the ball my fist up and punch towards the camera at some point. Now, though, that was a rather. I'm disturbed that you found that Matt.

MG: Miracle of the Internet.

JESSE WENTE: Yeah, I guess so. That was my brief dalliance as a child actor. I really liked acting as a kid. And I would say I still enjoy performing. But I also you know, it was on that set in the early 80s that I saw how you make a show. I saw that the the director and all the lighting people. We were on a completely constructed indoor soundstage with William Shatner and and a bunch of the kids who would go on to be stars on Degrassi, the original Degrassi. And that that ended up being a much larger fascination for me than acting was was how you tell the story, because when you're the actor, you're in service of the story. But when you're the director or the writer or the people behind the scenes, it seemed to me anyway, those were the people that actually got to decide how the story was told and that ended up being the driving interest of my life.

MG: Let me ask you about the story, because this book is divided into chapters, segments about stories. And one of the things that you have fought for is, is for the ability for people in your community to shape the stories, to tell those stories, to not own the stories, but to have agency in those stories. And you write about what happens when that doesn't occur and you write about it, particularly when you're speaking about tokenism. You say in the book that tokenism is representation without agency and that it can be surprisingly hard to tell when you are being tokenised. How did that play out? I mean, you have a dream job that you write about with the Toronto International Film Festival. This is one of the big film festivals in the world. You can help get those stories out there. You can shape what people see. How did that that experience play out when you were at TIFF?

JESSE WENTE: Yeah, I mean I mean, first of all, I do think it's actually important that indigenous people can also own the stories that they tell. I think that is part of it, too, because we have a storytelling industry, so we can't ignore that. There's capitalism has touched it. But, you know, TIFF was absolutely my dream job. You've known me for many, many years. That is, you know, running a movie theatre for this guy. I couldn't imagine that that was a thing. I didn't even realise that was a job that people had, I think, for the longest time. So it absolutely was a dream job, you know, in terms of my sense that I was becoming a token that happened over time, I don't think that was- Well, I know that wasn't the intent when I was hired because they the person who hired me sort of didn't care around my ethnicity. He was much more interested in my my knowledge of movies and my passion for film. And, you know, one of the one of the things that experience taught me and what happened was that eventually my indigeneity became a much bigger part of the job or a much bigger part of my public facing part of it.

MG: You were in many ways a resource that people went to.

JESSE WENTE: I was. That's right. And a resource to help that organisation navigate with the community and broader issues. But also, as someone who had become known as, you know, very much, I try to remain humble. But, you know, who had some good knowledge, let's say, around indigenous cinema in the history of indigenous cinema.

MG: One of the very few, if not the only indigenous film critic in North America.

JESSE WENTE: For a long time that certainly seemed seemed to be true. And then over time, my ability to actually effect change left. You know, I couldn't influence the decisions of the organisation. And so then you're left as well, and the indigenous people, that person they want to put out front, but I can't actually affect change that I think is necessary for my community behind the scenes. And that's never been a position I've been particularly comfortable with. But I think the learning method that I've had from that is that I think institutions in places like Canada, where so many of them are constructed without indigenous people and frankly, so many other marginalised communities, they're built without those communities in mind. And for for many First Nations, indigenous people in Canada, often they're built with the exact with assimilation in mind. Their original origins are how do we get the indigenous population to be more like Europeans? You know, if you think of the Canada Council when it was founded in 1957, if you wanted a grant and you were First Nations, you had to be practising a European art form. You know, the round dance or beating was not acceptable to the Canada Council at the time. So it was very much a tool of the assimilationist policies of Canada. So I found that institutions in Canada really struggle to not tokenised that it's just part of the culture, because when it comes to marginalised communities actually asking for the power, the agency to make fundamental change, that's where you hit a ceiling and where the line becomes well, if you're allowed to make that change, then you can, you don't become tokenised. If you're not, then the threat, the reality of becoming a token is very, very real. And I don't think many want to be that. And so for me, it's really about the struggle that we're going to have, even in very progressive and enlightened institutions and places that just weren't constructed with this sort of work in mind, that those are very real barriers and that we will need concerted community solidarity, effort and effort to shift some of those attitudes, beliefs and ultimately the policies that support them.

MG: Is that changing? I mean, you resigned from from Tife. You're now the chair, as I mentioned, to the Canada Council for the Arts. You're the director of the indigenous screen office. You're not just a seat at the table, you're at the head of the table. Is that changing when it comes to the institutions and in particular the institutions that help shape and. Yeah. Own the stories that we tell about each other?

JESSE WENTE: I think so, Matt. You know, I've had the pleasure, the you know, the Toronto International Film Festival just wrapped up this past week and they were honouring Alanis Obomsawin and, you know, legendary indigenous First Nations filmmaker, documentary filmmaker at the end of B. And it's always a pleasure to sit with her. And as it is with so many of our elders and I got a chance to sit with Alanis, who's now 89 and has made more than 50 films. And what she always reminds me always, Matt, because she knows that I need this reminder is that she has seen such enormous change in her life and that I need to acknowledge how much change I've seen in my life. And there's been enormous change. You know, the fact that there is an indigenous screen office I was advocating, like with many, many others, for it to be founded years before it was, and now it exists. And we just had a staff meeting yesterday, Matt, and it's now a full team of really impressive people. We had, you know, the Canada Council is is working on its shift. We have a new strategic plan that centres, you know, inclusion, decolonisation, these sorts of really big ideas. It focuses on them. So I think we are getting there. And I and what I would acknowledge is we're getting there not because of political will. We're getting there because of the will of activists, people on the ground. We're getting there because of the will of our allies, of those that stand in solidarity and work in solidarity with us, because I don't think this is something that you're going to get at an election. I think you're going to the only way you're going to get it addressed in an election is when we demand it. And because the political expedience of these issues for Canada is tough, Canada was not built to support indigenous people. It was built, as I said to you before, for the exact opposite reason. And so to turn that is going to require an effort of the people and I think over the next few years. I hope Matt, let me put it this way. I hope that reconciliation will be easier because I think the truth part of this process is going to be overwhelmingly impossible to deny in the coming years and that there will be no choice but to address it full on.

MG: Just finally, let me. Ask you how you see this through your own kids eyes, you write about your children in this book and you talk about taking them back to the First Nation. And on one of the trips that you have when you're heading back to Toronto, your daughter pipes up from the backseat of the car and she says that she wishes that Serpent River could be home. What did that mean to you?

JESSE WENTE: So much. I mean, the first thing that struck me is I think I asked my parents the exact same thing about at her age and got probably a very similar answer, which was it's complicated. But what it was also struck me was that. All of this effort to distance indigenous people from our communities, from the land, from each other, from our culture, and it is an enormous effort if we think the amount of human resources, all the resources that have been put into this, the economies that have sprung up around it, if we take all of that and what did it really? Because here's my daughter, my grandmother's great granddaughter. My grandmother left her community ashamed of who she was. And here's her great granddaughter, not only proud, but desperate to be back with our community. So it got a couple generations. And by the way, got a couple of generations who fight for the future because that's what I do when my sister doesn't, my family does, that seems like an enormous waste, like just an astonishing waste. And we're going to come to reckon with just how big a waste, you know, is more of the, you know, my community. Matt, on this past weekend held a ceremony at the residential schools to ask the children if they could search the grounds if the children felt it was time. These I don't call them discoveries. These are confirmations of what the our communities have always known. These are going to go on for years and the waste of it is going to assert an enormous pressure on this place because it is an astonishing waste. Because how, where would Canada be if all of those children had been allowed to be their best, if all of our communities had been allowed to thrive, if it had been from the very beginning, if it bit and understood that the health of Canada and its democracy is forever interwoven with the health of indigenous communities and their democracies, that when one gets sick, the other one can never get healthy and that these are so intertwined that we need to. That is what we ultimately have to grapple with. And that means big discussions, grown up adult discussions about the very nature of this union, this country. And that's what it reminded me driving back in that car back to Toronto with, you know, my 13 year old daughter asking me these questions in the back seat is that I want to have better answers for her and that Canada should have better answers for her and that her generation. They're not going to stand for not having those answers, so Canada get a better get ready, I spend I'm very privileged. I get to spend a lot of time with my kids, but also a lot of indigenous youth. They're not having it that they're not having it. So if you think I'm a troublemaker, just wait.

MG: I always cherish the conversations that we have in this book. I know is hard to write and hard to talk about because it's so personal, but but it feels like it's your life's work and that your life's work in some ways is just getting going as well.

JESSE WENTE: I hope so, Matt. And I appreciate the time and all the time we spent on the radio together. It's been very meaningful for me. And thank you so much for for this conversation and all that you're doing.

MG: Jesse, thank you very much. Magwitch Jesse Wenzhong. His new book is called Unreconciled Family Truth and Indigenous Resistance. Well, coming up after your regional update,

SOUNDCLIP

A leadership review can be a very good thing. Jason Kenney maybe tripped because one day he would announce this and two days later he would announce that which was totally opposite. Make a decision, stick with it.

MG: Make a decision and stick with it. A cabinet shuffle and calls for a leadership review. Paint a picture of a premier under pressure as a fourth wave continues to rip through Alberta. We will talk about the state of play in Alberta's provincial politics and the political future if there is one for Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta. That's coming up in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney faces uncertain political future, say pundits

Guests: Stephen Carter, Dave Cournoyer

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. When Jason Kenney swept the United Conservative Party to power in Alberta in 2013, it was more like a coronation than an election. He'd united the right and most the most conservative province in the country. He was wildly popular. He had a solid base of supporters he could count on until the covid pandemic, and his response to it shook things up. Alberta covid case counts are hitting record highs. ICUs are under extreme pressure after Premier Kenney declared the pandemic over in his province in July. Demands for the province to do something were getting deafening. But when Premier Kenny brought in restrictions and announced a vaccine passport last week, the response from those who objected was equally loud and now its calls for Jason Kenney's resignation that are echoing in the halls of power. Joel Mullan is vice president with the United Conservative Party's provincial board. He is calling for the Premier's resignation over the pandemic situation in that province.

SOUNDCLIP

He's 100 per cent responsible. He has been in control now since May 2019. He's been in the seat throughout the entire pandemic and ultimately he bears the responsibility.

MG: For more on this, I'm joined by Stephen Carter, president of DECIDE Campaigns. He served as former Alberta premier Alison Redford's chief of staff. He's also the co-host of the podcast, The Strategists. Stephen, good morning.

STEPHEN CARTER: Good morning.

MG: Is Jason Kenney bearing the responsibility 100 percent responsible for the situation in Alberta right now?

STEPHEN CARTER: He absolutely is. This is someone who comes into the premiership with the soul vision of how Alberta government should act, and he brought in. He was the one who combined two parties that really shouldn't be put together with the the Wildrose and the Conservatives. And he smush them together, disunited Conservative Party, because he had the technical capacity politically to do so, but not necessarily the vision to manage how these two polar opposites of conservative vision would actually manage to work together, especially in a crisis. That crisis, of course, was never imagined. No one, no one had the ability to see into the future, but it was exacerbated by that that crisis in that crisis really impacted his government tremendously.

MG: So you're a former chief of staff in the premier's office. Take me into that premier's office right now. What sort of pressure is Jason Kenney under?

STEPHEN CARTER: Well, there's all kinds of pressure because you're getting pressure from multiple sources within the government. We always think of it as kind of one hole, but actually it's made up of many different components. There's the actual government, which is your cabinet. That cabinet has been fractured. You saw the the minor cabinet shuffle yesterday. But basically that cabinet has been talking about open revolt for quite some time. The caucus is another group that is, of course, the elected representatives, most of whom believe they should be in cabinet, most of whom believe they are the world's best cabinet minister in waiting. And they are chomping at the bit, waiting to get in to cabinet and then putting pressure every day. And then finally, the third place is the actual party itself. And that's where you've just played a clip from a UCP party member who is putting the pressure on the party to hold the leadership review. This is the exact same confluent that brought down Alison Redford in 2013, 2014.

MG: You say a minor cabinet shuffle is moving Tyler Shandro out of the Health Ministry, a ministry that is being roundly criticised for the state of covid in the province. Is that going to buy Jason Kenney any time whatsoever?

STEPHEN CARTER: I don't believe so, because no one believes it was Tyler Shandro who is calling all the shots over the last 18 months. No one was saying, you know, it wasn't Tyler Shandro going to the microphone alone and saying now with a dire downer face, this is what's going to happen in Alberta. And I'm really, you know, really sad. Or wasn't Tyler Shandro saying we will not have vaccine passports unequivocally at the beginning of the summer where we are open for, you know, we are open for good. Those were all premier. So just simply moving Tyler Shandro out of the health ministry and putting in basically someone that no Albertan is able to pick out of the Line-Up in Jason copping. That's not really, you know, going to change the way that Albertans feel about the government.

MG: What did you make of what unfolded over the last couple of weeks? Certainly the last week of the federal election campaign. I mean, the premier's handling of the pandemic got played during the federal election. Erin O'Toole refused to comment on Alberta. Many people believe that he was cancelling interviews so he wouldn't be asked those questions. What did that do to the federal conservatives?

STEPHEN CARTER: Well, I think that they were absolutely undone by their provincial cousins here in Alberta, first of all, Jason Kenney tried to take a pass for the first three weeks of the campaign, not appearing in public, even with our rising covid rates that would make Ontario blush. These were huge jumps and huge numbers that they everybody knew there was a crisis, but the premier didn't appear. The premier was on vacation and didn't seem to be able to come back to address a health crisis in the province of Alberta.

MG: And won't answer the questions as to where he was on vacation. Which country who was actually in.

STEPHEN CARTER: Which is ridiculous. You were on vacation. I mean, what difference does it make where you were on vacation? He was on vacation. He could have come back. He didn't come back. And this is now turning into a massive problem for the Conservative Party of Canada because they are connected the same way that they tried to keep Doug Ford kind of out of the way and out of their politics. This time. You don't want an unpopular provincial cousin to be causing problems for the federal party. And we caused problems, especially when Jason Kenney stood up last week and announced his not a vaccine passport vaccine passport.

MG: Is that I mean, the anger around this people have called, it's complicated, to say the very least. The restrictions exemption programme is what they're calling this vaccine passport is that if you take a look at all the things that are going to undo him is reversing his position on that in your province, kind of, you know, the last spike.

STEPHEN CARTER: This is what represents the two halves of the Conservative Party problem, the best you have a house that has been begging for this type of intervention because it, of course, will increase our vaccination rates, which is the only way out of our particular crisis. We get the vaccination rates up. We maybe don't turn into a crazy place, but we can't because we are a crazy place. So the other half of the party represents that crazy place. They are the ones saying, you know, personal freedom, personal choice, anti masking, anti vaccination. The person is the most important part. And they are responding to inputs that, you know, the rest of, you know, urban conservatives really. I mean, there's a number of them in urban areas as well. But this is primarily rural members that are getting pressure because they're not seeing the same challenges out. In Albert, we've managed to spread covid fairly far and wide in our rural areas, too, because we really have reached a special level here.

MG: You have seen this movie before with Alison Redford, where the pressure is unrelenting. At what stage is Jason Kenney at now? Will he be forced to step down?

STEPHEN CARTER: If he was Alison Redford, he would have been forced to step down a year ago. We won't get to I mean, I think there's a gender politics issue here. But moving past the gender politics issue, you have to recognise that this is a premier that to put this together, this is the equivalent of Stephen Harper being forced out of the Canadians, the Conservative Party of Canada. This is massive. This is the guy who put it together and the only person with the instruction manual on how to actually manage it, because even with O'Toole and Scheer, they didn't get the instruction manual on how to manage the Conservative Party of Canada, and they haven't been able to put it all together to actually form government again. And I think that that will be the same situation for whoever replaces Kenny when Kenny is inevitably forced out of the premier's chair. I think we're talking it could be days. Could be weeks. Could be months. But I can't see him making it all the way to the next election.

MG: Do you think he'll step out or will he be forced out?

STEPHEN CARTER: I don't know, but this is what makes it exciting, isn't it? Did you feel the excitement? This is this is like watching theatre for us political geeks. It's it's it's reality television come large. And I think he's too powerful to be forced out. But I think we could be facing an election as early as November in Alberta, which would put all three of our major election cycles all in in a four month period, which is just like going to the carnival for for people like me will be watching.

MG: Stephen, thank you.

STEPHEN CARTER: Thanks very much.

MG: Stephen Carter in Calgary, president of DECIDE Campaigns. He was former Premier Alison Redford's chief of staff and he's the co-host of the podcast, The Strategists. Joining me now from Edmonton is Dave Cournoyer. He's the host of the Daveberta podcast. It looks at Alberta politics. Dave, good morning to you.

DAVE COURNOYER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: That is Jason Kenney toast.

DAVE COURNOYER: You know, it's hard to see a way out, a better way out for Jason Kenney right now. I mean, I think the thing to remember is Jason Kenney has proven himself to be a remarkable political survivor over his past 25 years in politics. But he has dug such a big hole, political hole for himself in this province right now. And and listening to you to to my mind, my friend Stephen Carter, speak before before this interview. You know, we talk a lot about covid talk a lot about the government's response to covid and how they fumbled the response by, you know, responding to, in many cases, responding too late and then removing restrictions too early. But Jason Kenny's problems are bigger than covid. You go back even a couple of years and his personal popularity has always dragged behind his party. And then since forming government, Kenny has mastered the ability to anger the maximum number of Albertans at any possible given time. I mean, I can name- name just a number of examples where his government has kind of dug itself in on unpopular decisions, even during the pandemic, policies that had nothing to do with the pandemic, including the push to privatise inclose provincial parks, opening up the Rocky Mountains to open pit coal mining, which is which is extremely unpopular, especially in rural areas in southwest Alberta. And then during the pandemic, his government's attack on doctors, their attack on nurses, forcing through a new draught curriculum that in many cases the many, many people believe is kind of bizarrely ideological and and out of date. So covid is something that that is kind of coalescing. The the the opposition to his leadership are the opposition to his leadership is kind of coalescing around this issue, especially within his own caucus. But but Kenis problems are much bigger. And I mean, I listen to what Carter was talking about when he was talking about the merger of the United Kingdom, the merger of the United Conservative Party between the Wildrose party and the progressive Conservatives back before the twenty nineteen election. Now, this was something that was this is a party that was created for the sole purpose of defeating Rachel Notley's NDP in the 2019 election. And they were very successful. They won a big majority government in twenty nineteen. But what they've discovered since they've become government is that all the things that the progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose didn't like about each other all still exist. But now they're all in one party, which makes it kind of a big and potentially a big explosion.

MG: What do you think happens today? There's a caucus meeting today. What will happen in that meeting?

DAVE COURNOYER: Well, I think there's going to be a lot of leaders who are going to be getting, you know, getting things off their chests and having some serious conversations about how they feel the party is doing, how they feel the premier is doing. One of the things that's on top of mind for a lot of people, as is the state of the Conservative Party for the past three financial quarters, the UCP has raised about half of what the New Democrats have. So the NDP are raising twice as much cash as as the as the United Conservative Party, which is almost unheard of, which would have been unheard of even even a year ago in Alberta politics. And then since November, I think there have been eight or nine public opinion polls that have been released that show the NDP leading. So, I mean, you know, there's speculation that if forced, Premier Kenney might call an early election, but I'm not sure his party's in a financial position or even a position in terms of being in the polls to succeed in an election. So it's kind of a you know, it's an empty threat in some way.

MG: If you take a look at the pandemic, is there a way for Jason Kenney to satisfy the more conservative parts of his base, which may be against further covid restrictions and people who are hearing about, you know, the federal government being asked to be involved in emergency transfers of patients out of province because the issues are overfilled to people who want more safety measures. Is there a way for him to make any common ground there?

DAVE COURNOYER: I think that ship has sailed. I think that over the course of the pandemic, Premier Kenny has proven himself to be held hostage by a base that isn't necessarily in tune with where mainstream Elberta was. And specifically, I mean, you could totally use the example of vaccine passport in which the provincial government is calling the restriction exemption programme. They can't even call it a passport because of the anger that it would that it would rise in Kennedy's political base. But while Jason Kenney was talking about before they introduced the programme, while they were talking about how was talking about how we could potentially be illegal, how much he opposed it, we saw polls come out that showed that up to upwards of 77 percent of Albertans supported a passport. And you had groups like the Chambers of Commerce Business Associations, a group of 10 mayors in the Edmonton area and region were calling for some kind of vaccine passport programme weeks before they implemented it, as Albertans were watching the cases rise in the fourth wave, which I mean now has reached more than 21,000 active cases here in the province. So Albertans could see this coming. And Jason Kenney, I mean, he was on vacation and sure, he gets to go on vacation, but then he came back and he disappeared. And it was very it was widely speculated that he was he was not making any public appearances and not making any big decisions on how to deal with the fourth wave of covid because he didn't want to embarrass Erin O'Toole and he didn't want to embarrass the federal conservatives. And it reached a point where he was forced to come out the week before the end of the election and announce these new restrictions, which which was extremely unpopular. And and many, many, many political watchers and many conservatives in this province believe cost the federal conservatives votes and and really seats in Alberta, which which would have been unheard of even a month ago. I mean, it looked like the conservatives would have swept Alberta. But now there's you know, there's a handful of seats that, you know, the NDP and the Liberals appear to have won.

MG: In the last 90 seconds that we have. I want to ask you two questions about two different political scenarios. One is the NDP and Rachel Notley. Is that a party that's in a position to form government in the next election?

DAVE COURNOYER: Now, if an election were called right now, I think I think Rachel Notley would be premier.

MG: But the election isn't scheduled for a couple of years, so...

DAVE COURNOYER: That's right. So 2023 is when the election is scheduled. I mean, I think it depends what happens to the what happens. You know, the Conservative Party, I think if Jason Kenney remains party leader, the UCP is going to have a very hard time getting re-elected as government in this province and the NDP are in a position to form.

MG: The other issue is he came in, as you said, under the banner of uniting the right. Is there the possibility that you could see the resurrection of another Wildrose party, that mission of uniting the right could backfire and explode?

DAVE COURNOYER: Absolutely. We've already seen two U.S. MLAs be ejected from the UCP caucus and they're sitting as independents, essentially operating as a caucus. And I think right now they're just sitting back and waiting for more MLAs to join them, if Kenny doesn't resign as leader.

MG: And do you think he'll be forced out or will he resign or will he stay?

DAVE COURNOYER: I think. Well, I think all those scenarios are possible. I think there's going to there's no doubt there's a push to try to get him to resign as leader. I think the party sees him as a big liability at this point. And, you know, with a year and a half left till the next election, I think there are those in the party who believe there's a there's a chance they can reinvent themselves under a new party leader, which is something that the old progressive conservative party in this province used to accelerate.

MG: Dave, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

DAVE COURNOYER: Thanks so much.

MG: Dave Conway, host of the Dave Burton podcast, taking a look at Alberta politics.

[Music]

Shazam for birds: Merlin Bird ID app can identify a bird from its song

Guest: Jessie Barry

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, my name is Matt Galloway, you know that feeling you keep hearing a song everywhere you go. Catchy song. Sounds familiar. You just can't actually figure out what the song is. I think we've all been there. There is thankfully an app for that. Shazam, you hold up your phone, you let it listen for a few seconds and the phone tells you usually who sings that song or what the song is. It's a bit harder, though, when the song sounds like this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Birds chirping]

MG: What's that? Any guesses? Take another listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Birds chirping]

MG: It's a Bluejay, you might be hearing more calls like that these days, fall, migration underway, birds on the move. And now here to solve the problem you never knew you had is an app called the Merlin Bird ID, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The app will listen to a bird call and identify the species that you are hearing. Jessie Barry is one of the founders of Merlin. Jessie, good morning.

JESSIE BARRY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: This is like magic for those of us who love the sound of birds. How does it work?

JESSIE BARRY: Yes. So Merlin is essentially an app that's been trained to identify bird songs because we have this archive, the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. So have examples of what Bird sounds like from around the world, then we can train the machine to figure out that bird that you're hearing and we're kind of converting that sound into an image and using the computer vision technology that's available to us today to help you identify birds in the field.

MG: OK, explain how that all works, because I've used the app. I love it. But the vision technology explain what's actually going on when I record the sound of the bird.

JESSIE BARRY: When you recorded the sound, it will essentially convert that sound into an image and then look for all the little differences in that image and give you an answer in real time. So when you're using the app, you're going to see a picture scrolling across with the bird sounds that are in that environment at that time. And then it's going to let you know what species are vocalising right as you're listening.

MG: How accurate is it?

JESSIE BARRY: Accuracy is about 90 percent in the kind of experimental tests, and when you go out in the field, you know, circumstances are a little different. If you got wind, if you got a loud environment around, you might be dropping the accuracy, but if you get closer to the bird without scaring it, that's going to boost your accuracy as well.

MG: How close do you need to be for this thing to work?

JESSIE BARRY: Not really that close. With the fantastic microphones in mobile devices right now, maybe 20 metres or so. But you might be surprised that you don't need to be right next to the bird. You can stay pretty far away.

MG: What happens if there are multiple bird calls that you can hear at the same time? Is it able to decipher those?

JESSIE BARRY: Yes, actually, we've done a lot of work to make very precise annotations and training Merlin to pick up different vocalisations so it can even handle overlapping species. And that's certainly needed, you know, a spring morning where you might have a dozen birds that are singing all at once. Merlin is able to pick out individuals.

MG: There's a whole community that is behind this app. Tell me about the sound recorders.

JESSIE BARRY: Yeah. So there's a volunteer sound recordists from around the world and bird watchers who are submitting their sightings into birds in this combination of folks who are, you know, very dedicated to going out in the field and submitting their data, are giving us this picture of bird populations worldwide. And they're giving us the data that's helping, you know, just build an app like Merlin that can enable anyone to go out there and just have fun watching birds, perhaps for the first time.

MG: Where did your interest in this come from? I mean, when did you become fascinated with birds?

JESSIE BARRY: When I was about 10 years old. I was starting to go out into the marsh with my family. And I was wondering, you know, what are these species? I had a great uncle who was studying geese in the Canadian Arctic and with some fantastic mentors, I've been able to kind of take that, you know, childhood curiosity and morphed into a career in and still a hobby for me today.

MG: A career is one thing, a hobby is something else. And to a lot of people, I mean, we saw this over the course of the pandemic where people had more time at home. They noticed the birds perhaps in their neighbourhood off the deck of their condo or in the backyard. But they may not have known much about them and they might have thought, like, I can't figure out what this is without expert advice. How could an app like this demystify the world of birds that you love so much?

JESSIE BARRY: Yeah, Merlin is there for you in those moments where you see something and you're just not sure because you don't need to have any answers to begin with. If you just kind of open up Merlin and answer a few simple questions about the colour, the size of the bird, Merlin will give you a list of choices based on your date and location. If you're hearing bird sounds, there's that recording feature where you can get those answers to, you know, what birds are nearby. So it's really accessible for anyone who's just curious enough to figure out what species are in their neck of the woods.

MG: How do you think an app like this could help save birds?

JESSIE BARRY: I think it's going to be critical for more people to notice birds and to pay attention to them, because birds are so cool that when you take that minute to watch and you're like, wow, you know, many people who see birds start to fall in love with them and we need more people who are connected to birds in the natural world in order to improve the health of the planet and the ecosystems that we're living in. So I think that ultimately more people who are looking at birds and starting to care about them can help us make those changes that we need to improve environmental health.

MG: This is this is the work that you do. But do you still use the app? Are there things that you hear that you can't identify that the app helps you with?

JESSIE BARRY: Yeah, occasionally. You know, when I'm travelling especially, that's when they're species that I am not familiar with. And I've also found that there are things sometimes in the background that the app picks up before I did. And so, you know, even with a lot of burning experience, I've still been blown away at how Merlin is able to help me identify things that I hadn't noticed.

MG: Like we heard this persistent tweeting in the background and we were wondering what it was. We couldn't figure it out, pulled the phone out, use the app and it was an Eastern toay, which was tucked away in the trees somewhere that we had we couldn't see, but we could just hear it. It's like, oh, that's what it is. And you felt, you felt better, but you felt like you knew something that you didn't know before you pulled the phone out.

JESSIE BARRY: Fantastic.

MG: Jesse, thank you for telling us about this. We will send people to the app to find out more.

JESSIE BARRY: Wonderful. Thanks, Matt.

MG: Jessie Barry is one of the founders of the Merlin Bird ID. It's an app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It can identify birds using sound recording. You have to take your phone it into nature, which is kind of in some ways against taking time out in nature. But there can be benefits if you use it in the right way. Perhaps that is The Current for this Wednesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One it's Q. In 1994, Paula Jones was the first woman to come out publicly with allegations of sexual assault against President Bill Clinton. She became the target of media attacks, late night monologues as well. Her story, alongside the stories of people like Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, is being given a feminist retelling in a new TV show called Impeachment, American Crime Story. Topower will speak with Tony Award winning actor Annaleigh Ashford about portraying Paula Jones. That is coming up just a few moments on CBC Radio One. And talking about birds and the fall migration and the change in the seasons. The American rock band, The Byrds, B Y R D S, not the Hitchcock movie, came out with one of the greatest anthems for changing times and changing seasons back in 1965. So to mark the migration season, it's the Byrds and Turn, Turn, Turn. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

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The Current Transcript for September 21, 2021

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

As COVID-19 vaccines for kids get closer, experts weigh up how to reassure parents

Jesse Wente on family, truth and Indigenous resistance

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney faces uncertain political future, say pundits

Shazam for birds: Merlin Bird ID app can identify a bird from its song

Wednesday 22 September, 2021

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