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The Current Transcript for September 16, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Protesters chanting]

The worldwide march against Monsanto has drawn hundreds out onto the streets, people seizing the opportunity to voice their opposition to GMO foods.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: “No, no GMO” is the chant against Monsanto, but what will they march against if Monsanto is no more? The GMO seed producer—an agricultural mega corporation—struck a deal this week to be bought up by another. And though the genetically altered seeds may still be sold, there's a chance they'll no longer go under the name Monsanto. Asking how that might actually change our conversations about all things GMO is first up today. After that—

SOUNDCLIP

Then a man walks in and I knew that he was secret police even though he wasn't wearing a uniform. And he said to Ahlam about me, “Get rid of her.”

PC: Journalist Deborah Campbell tells some remarkable stories in her book, A Disappearance in Damascus, and they're all the more remarkable for featuring someone who usually stays behind the scenes. It is the story of her fixer, the trusted emissary and helper foreign correspondents rely on to get the story. But in the case of Ahlam, she became the story herself. You'll hear about her from Deborah Campbell in a half an hour. Also today—

SOUNDCLIP

If somebody said describe your family to me, I would say there’s two dads, one mom and one person dating another person.

PC: As unconventional multi-person partnerships become more mainstream and more common in Canadian society, we're going to hear firsthand about polyamorous relationships—how they work and whether those in multi-person relationships deserve more legal rights. That conversation in an hour's time. Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Can the Monsanto-Bayer deal change the image of GMOs?

Guests: Sylvain Charlebois, Lucy Sharratt

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My name is Todd Woodhouse. I’m an agronomist with the DeKalb, the seed corn company. We also sell soybeans as well. What I see out here in our corn fields, I see better quality grain with our genetically engineered crops than I would with a conventional crop.

VOICE 2: My name's Gary Davison. I farm actually down in the Niagara Peninsula. Well, we actually use genetically modified soybeans and genetically modified corn. I I've seen some really incredible results. You know I used to use conventional—both corn and soybeans—and I just saw a really incredible difference between the genetically modified plants and the ones that I was growing, you know just the standard.

VOICE 3: It has allowed us to change the herbicides we use. It has allowed us to use a lot less herbicides. And even now, we are changing the way we use the genetically modified organisms. We are eating it ourselves. We're feeding it to our livestock. And as far as we know, it’s safe.

PC: Those farmers were attending a farm show yesterday in Woodstock, Ontario and they were reacting to news that has rocked the agricultural world. Earlier this week, the giant agricultural corporation Monsanto struck a deal to be taken over by the giant pharmaceutical company Bayer. The deal's worth $66 billion American. And if it's approved by regulators, it will mean that Bayer will control more than 25 per cent of the world's supply of seeds and pesticides. It may also mean the end of the name Monsanto, a name that over the years has become a magnet for controversy as a synonym for genetically modified organisms or GMOs. Monsanto first pioneered GMO seeds 20 years ago and today they make up the vast majority of seeds planted in the United States. In Canada, four GM crops are grown: canola, corn, soy and sugar beet. Sylvain Charlebois is the dean of the Faculty of Management and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. He’s in Halifax. Hi.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Good morning, Piya.

PC: So you heard those farmers, they sounded pretty positive. When most people though, outside the food industry hear Monsanto, what do you think they're thinking?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: [Laughs] Hatred. You just Google Monsanto and you'll see it's horrible. The brand was damaged by years of indifference towards the public. Its risk communication strategy was probably one of the worst in history, to be honest. I did spend a week at Monsanto in St. Louis about more than a year ago and when you when you go on campus—because it looks like a university campus—there are thousands of PhDs who work at Monsanto. Most of the employees at Monsanto just felt that science was on their side so why bother engaging with the public. And that really hurt them over time.

PC: So you went down. You spent a week at their headquarters in St. Louis. Who paid for your research?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, my former employer, the University of Guelph. Not Monsanto.

PC: Okay.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: It's good to clarify.

PC: Okay. And the reputation as you said, or the perception in the public realm of Monsanto isn't a good one. Hated, I think is what you said. Other people use evil corporation, other terms like that. Do you think that Monsanto, the company, deserves that reputation?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: My answer to that question would be yes because it was a scientific, it is a science-driven organization. It never felt that it owed anything to anyone. And frankly because it has sued over 450 farmers over time, its arrogance really hurt them very much. So I would say that yes, Monsanto is very much to blame for its bad image. And it has affected the biotech agenda overall. Agriculture is stronger—you heard the farmers earlier—I mean clearly farmers really embrace the technology in the fields.

PC: Well, I wanted to ask you about what you just said, which is okay, there's one thing for the reputation of a specific company—in this case Monsanto—to be tarnished or damaged or hated. But to what extent has the reputation of GMO crops been affected by its association with Monsanto, given such a big player?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, we've seen marches all over the world in over 40 countries, over 400 cities. And the aim was Monsanto and Monsanto was linked to the whole GMO debate. I actually do think that the biotechs really didn't help themselves by selling the virtues of the technologies years ago—more than 20 years ago—to farmers. But in the equation, they completely forgot about the consumer and they paid for it afterwards. And that's why we saw this rebellion against the technology and of course environmentalist groups, I felt, were very effective in finding that one target and that target became Monsanto.

PC: What does the science tell us about the safety of GMO in 2016?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: So I'm on the national board of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and I can certainly tell you that there is no evidence, or little evidence, that genetically modified crops represent a threat to human health. But of course in the grand scheme of things, we've been eating genetically modified ingredients for a very short time, less than 20 years. Since 1994, we've been exposed to the technology as consumers. So that's 22 years ago. So we still have to evaluate risks over the long term and see if there is any sort of—but right now, there's really no compelling evidence.

PC: Hmm. I think it's something like 50 per cent of corn grown in our country is GMO seed, right?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I would go even further. If you walk into a grocery store, more than 75 per cent of everything you see on shelves has some former genetically modified ingredient.

PC: Hmm. And none of those packages ever say Monsanto if that’s the seed that they’ve used.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Right now in Canada, we have a voluntary labeling law. Unlike Vermont—in Vermont, since July 1^st, they have a mandatory law so if you actually have genetically modified content, you need to label it.

PC: Hmm. So Bayer is buying up—or it needs to be approved by regulators, but if it goes through—Bayer buys up Monsanto, Bayer itself says we haven't made a final decision on the name, but how likely do you think it would be for Bayer to drop the Monsanto brand?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: The Monsanto brand was heavily damaged. I have to say, I mean everyone wanted Monsanto to disappear. Monsanto, most of all. They knew that they had to do something with their brand so that's why they were after Syngenta a couple of years ago. That bid failed in Switzerland last year and Monsanto became a target. And that's why Bayer went after it. And I think it's a good acquisition for Bayer because Bayer is an internationally known company. It’s European based, not American. And frankly what I've seen in the media over the last few days is very interesting because in America, there's little coverage of the deal because it's really Monsanto being defeated, whereas in Europe, when you watch, when you read financial news in Europe, there's celebrating this historical acquisition by Bayer which actually has a good name.

PC: You know this reminds me—and maybe this is an unfair analogy—but it's sort of like the rebranding of Blackwater, right? You change your name. You hope people forget of the things that you're accused of doing or that you did. Does this sound familiar to you?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, a lot of people forget that at Monsanto, there's actually real people working there—over 21,000 people—people in good faith, believing that what they're doing is actually good for the planet. When I was there, I was interviewing different folks with my colleague and I have to say, some of the interviews that we did were quite poignant. One lady was explaining to me that her family was divided as a result of the fact she was working at Monsanto. At Thanksgiving dinner in America— being in America, Thanksgiving is a big deal—she was explaining why her sister-in-law left the dinner table because she was insulted by the fact that she was working for Monsanto. So it really became so divisive. And I would actually blame Monsanto for polarizing this debate over time so this is actually probably the start of a new era when it comes to biotechnology.

PC: Sylvain Charlebois, just hold on a second. I'm going to bring you back into our conversation but I want to bring in another guest. Lucy Sharratt is the coordinator for the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. She's in our Ottawa studio. Hi, Lucy.

LUCY SHARRATT: Hello.

PC: So just overall, what do you want to say about what Sylvain says?

LUCY SHARRATT: Well, let me start by saying that this merger of Bayer and Monsanto is an extreme concern. We already have a very high level of corporate consolidation in the global seed and pesticide markets and that problem, which people had identified when they called out the name Monsanto, is about to become much worse and there are some concrete realities behind that merger, what it means. And so ultimately, this problem is not just a branding problem. There's a reality behind that branding problem.

PC: And to the extent of the seed, the pesticide, the food that all emerges from all of this, do you think that a rebranding of Monsanto—is that going to change many people's mistrust that people have of genetically modified foods? You heard Sylvain say look, most of the stuff you get in the produce section in your grocery store has some GMO-ish stuff attached to it. Do you think it's going to change the mistrust?

LUCY SHARRATT: Just to clarify, produce section is largely free of genetically engineered foods. It's processed food ingredients.

PC: Pardon me, yes.

LUCY SHARRATT: But I think consumer perception is unlikely to change because there is no labeling of those genetically modified food ingredients. So already, people have named Monsanto when they think about genetically modified foods. But in fact, that brand name does not appear in the grocery store. So people are seeking out information where there is none and that I think is the major problem.

PC: I guess the question I'm trying to get at is that people—do people trust Monsanto the company or their mistrust of GMO food? And does that change with this takeover by Bayer, do you think?

LUCY SHARRATT: I think there are two major issues, two major concerns that the public has named when they give the short form of Monsanto. One is concern over genetically modified foods and the other is concern over corporate control in seeds and pesticides. Both of those problems remain whether or not Monsanto keeps its name or not. In fact, that whole set of issues is about to become much more urgently problematic.

PC: What do you want people to remember if Bayer does change the name?

LUCY SHARRATT: Any corporation here is looking out for profit-making and the science of genetic engineering has been used by these companies to make profits. There's very little transparency in government regulation. There's no labeling for consumers. And what we need to see instead is consultation with farmers and consumers before these products come to market. Are we really going to allow three companies to control around 60 per cent of the global market? That's a really dangerous and vulnerable situation for everyone.

PC: Sylvain, let me bring you back into our conversation. You know Lucy’s saying you know it's not just Monsanto that's the problem. It's the monopolies that these three companies have. It's that there's not enough involvement from regular people. It's the GMO themselves. What do you say to that?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I think the Monsanto acquisition is a game changer in that regards. First of all, environmentalists groups, environmental groups are probably celebrating the end of Monsanto today but they're probably questioning what the next steps are for them because they've targeted Monsanto so much. But since the target doesn't exist anymore, they’re going to have to basically look at other targets. Now you're looking at major corporations out of Europe and Europe, it has been historically unfriendly to GMOs which is interesting, unlike North America where we've embraced genetically modified organisms, starting with canola in Canada. It's a huge success story. It's a GMO. Canola’s a GMO but we celebrated canola. In Europe, there's some concerns about GMO but Bayer’s based out of Europe, Syngenta’s based out of Europe, being bought out by ChinaChem. I do accept Lucy's concern about consolidation. Yes, it's true, actually. We're going to look at maybe three major corporations controlling the seeds and traits business and moving forward, of course if I'm a farmer, I would be concerned about that certainly because prices, input prices, may eventually go up and probably will go up as a result of more consolidation. And that could compromise global food security. So to me, that's the main concern.

PC: We did reach out to both Monsanto and Bayer and I want to get both your reactions to what they said. They didn't give us an interview but Monsanto did send us a statement. I want to read part of it. Here's what Monsanto sent us: “While we do receive a fair amount of negative attention, it reflects the bigger truth that people care deeply about food. We do too. We know everyone isn't going to agree with us but we're glad that people are open to sharing their questions and concerns about the big challenges around food, resources, the environment and ensuring a balanced meal is accessible to all.” So that's the statement from Monsanto. Lucy Sharratt, what do you think of the statement?

LUCY SHARRATT: Well, Monsanto can try and humanize itself, whether it's called Bayer or Monsanto or something else, but the problem here is systemic. There's a very concrete problem here, which is whether it's called Monsanto or something else, this level of control that we're about to see is unprecedented in the seeds market. And as Sylvain has said, that has tremendous implications and that is what we really need to look at and deal with and that problem is really what's at hand here. This is why people have taken to the streets and named Monsanto is because people want more control over their food and they want to share that control with farmers, not with large multinational corporations.

PC: Sylvain, as you said earlier, you know you spent a week at Monsanto looking at their risk communication. So when you see a statement like the one that I just read from Monsanto, what do you think they're doing here? Are they getting it right, so to speak, at least from a perception angle?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, they were trying to. Because I visited Monsanto more than a year ago, I think they felt that they failed the public. They just didn't know how to engage with the public. And Monsanto, frankly, was just not hardwired to do that whereas Bayer I think is better equipped to connect with the public overall. I mean Lucy’s organization exists as a result of Monsanto's failed risk communication strategy. I mean that's Monsanto's legacy.

LUCY SHARRATT: We exist—the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network exists—because there's so little information for the public and so few ways for people to be engaged in a debate about genetic engineering without labeling on grocery store shelves. In fact, it's down to organizations like us to let people know what food they're eating, which foods are genetically modified. And until these fundamental problems of a lack of transparency are solved and they can be solved by the government today, this problem will persist.

PC: And to pick up on that, Lucy, this is not a done deal. International regulators haven't yet said if they will approve this deal.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: It has to be approved by over 30 jurisdictions so they have a long, long way to go.

PC: Okay. So Lucy, what do you think the reaction should be from international regulators? As Sylvain says, there’s a long way to go.

LUCY SHARRATT: This is a very serious global problem. Absolutely national regulators need to be looking at anti-competition and this is actually something we've already asked the competition bureau in Canada to review this merger, just as other countries have to. What does it mean—for Canadian farmers in particular—if this company owns a quarter of the seeds and pesticides market? It means higher prices, fewer choices, reduced innovation. These all need to be quantified as problems. It's high time that we actually examine not just these particular mergers but the entire problem of corporate consolidation in food and farming.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I agree with Lucy. I think over the short term, Bayer will display some reservation in terms of increasing input costs or increasing their prices. But over the next super cycle, where you may see commodity prices go up again because right now they're pretty low, so I don't think they want to price themselves out of the market. But as we move into the next super cycle and we may see a bushel of wheat go back up to eight maybe nine dollars US maybe, or corn or soya, then perhaps you may see Bayer take advantage of that and increase its prices. And that's where I think farmers will become very concerned about more consolidation in the marketplace.

PC: Sylvain and Lucy, good to talk to both of you. Thank you for your perspectives.

LUCY SHARRATT: Thank you.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Thank you.

PC: Sylvain Charlebois is the dean of the Faculty of Management and professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. He’s in Halifax. Lucy Sharratt is the coordinator for the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. She was in our Ottawa studio. I know. You have things to say about this so let us know what you think. Will the takeover of Monsanto by Bayer change the discussion about GMOs? You can tell us your thoughts. Find out all our contact information at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you're there, look for the contact link. And you can also find us on Facebook or on Twitter @the currentCBC. Coming up next, it's the CBC News. I’ll learn how to speak while that's going on. Then, a disappearance in Damascus. We'll hear the story of one of those people who usually toil silently behind the story—the dangers facing a fixer who helps foreign correspondents do their work. My name is Piya Chattopadhyay. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. We're back in just a bit.

[Music: Sting]

'Real heroes': Journalist highlights invaluable role of fixers in foreign reporting

Guests: Deborah Campbell

PC: Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, some families are a little more complicated than others, such as when Mommy has a boyfriend and Daddy has a partner who also lives in home. There is an infinite variety of such polyamorous arrangements but as family units, they have limited rights compared to more traditional couplings. We'll hear firsthand about life in a polyamorous relationship. That's coming up in a half hour from now. But first, a fixer’s tale.

[Music: Sting]

PC: Sadly, when we think of Syria today, we think of the so many refugees. The UN estimates there are more than 10 million displaced Syrians in the world today. Six million inside the country itself and four million scattered around the world. But once upon a time, before the 2011 revolution gripped the country and sent it spiraling into civil war, Syria itself was home to refugees, specifically Iraqi refugees fleeing violence after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Back in 2007, journalist Deborah Campbell traveled to Damascus to follow and document the exodus of millions of Iraqi refugees into Syria. And it's there that she would meet an Iraqi woman named Ahlam, a name that means “dreams.” Ahlam would become both her fixer and her friend and would one day go missing right in front of Deborah. The story of Ahlam is detailed in Deborah Campbell's new book that's called A Disappearance in Damascus. And Deborah Campbell joins us from Vancouver. Hello.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Hello.

PC: Take me back to that first meeting with Ahlam. How did you first meet her?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, when I land in a new place and I know I'm going to spend a lot of time immersing myself in a culture, I try to find the local experts, the people that can connect me to other sources. And specifically when I'm working among people who are somewhat traumatized, I look for someone that they trust. So the first thing I did was talk to some local journalists because they tend to have a lot of connections. And so I met a Syrian journalist who had written a fabulous piece on the million and a half Iraqis that had come to Syria by 2007 and it turned out through talking to him that the reason his piece was so fantastic was because he had a really good source who had essentially given him all the information. And he said you know you might be interested in meeting her. She's an interesting person. So I went with him and went to this neighborhood of Damascus that was at the time starting to be called Little Baghdad. It was the probably the highest concentration of civilians running from the Iraq war in the world, outside of Iraq itself, about 300,000. And there, I met Ahlam. And it turned out that she was very much embedded inside that community, being a refugee herself and someone who really had experienced the Iraq war for herself. And she was already working as a fixer in Syria for a lot of the international press. And we hit it off.

PC: So what stood out? Like what was it about Ahlam that stood out to you about her?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, in general, I'm a little bit leery about fixers. I generally spend a lot of time in the societies that I'm covering. And there was something about Ahlam that was—it inspired trust. And I think it was her really close personal connection to the community that she was working with and her obvious care for the people that she was working with. She had run a humanitarian centre in Baghdad where she was working with the war-wounded and the widows and the orphans. She'd been through a lot before she came to Syria. She'd been kidnapped in Baghdad. [Unintelligible] was ransom. That's why she became a refugee herself. So she'd lived the story. She wasn't just somebody who was you know giving me professional advice. She knew it from the inside.

PC: Let's talk about this word fixer—and I'm glad you brought up the word trust—because essentially a fixer for journalists working in places that are far off, they’re our lifelines. And so just explain what a fixture does for journalists like yourself.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: A fixer is a local expert. They are these conduits of information and connections. They generally have not only street smarts but a sense of gregariousness, they know people from different walks of life and they're also aware of things that a newcomer coming in—a foreign correspondent—may not know, like security issues. They can feel which way the winds are blowing. They know when it's time to cut the interview and let's go.

PC: As I like to say when I meet a new fixer, you've got my back and I've got yours and I trust you and you trust me. And without that, this relationship won't be safe and it won't be fruitful.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: It's a very interdependent relationship. The fixer can put the journalist at risk if they make bad decisions. And the journalist can put the fixer at risk if they make bad decisions or push too hard and want to go places where the fixer is very well aware of what they may be running into.

PC: And in your stories, do you credit fixers?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, fixers often don't want to be credited. The thing is, if they're helping you do a story—and so for myself, I generally work undercover. So in the case of going into Syria or going into Iran, I usually go in as a professor who's studied Farsi or studied classical Arabic. These are facts. These are true. So I'm more hiding in plain sight. I have good reason to be there because I'm interested in the culture. And it just answers a lot of questions before they get asked. I don't use the J word—journalist— in places where journalists are under suspicion and perhaps followed. And then of course, your sources are followed and they could have much more trouble than you down the line.

PC: Let's get back to Ahlam. You met her way before the 2011 revolutions and ensuing civil war in Syria and that's ongoing of course. What story were the two of you working on at that time?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, I was chronicling the long-term effects of the war on Iraqi civilians. So there had been about five million people displaced, half of those had left the country, mostly the professional class—the doctors and accountants and filmmakers—people who really kept the country running were running for their lives.

PC: And how much did you—I don’t know if this is the right word, but—depend on Ahlam to get the story?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, she was living in, as I said, this suburb of Damascus that was sometimes called Little Baghdad. And this was a quite conservative area and a place where also journalists really stood out. And so I knew I had to tread carefully there. And she had access to a lot of people that were wary of talking to strangers. You know when you're running for your lives from strangers, you know weren’t necessarily to answer intrusive questions from people you don't know. And as soon as I was with her though, because people trusted her, they would welcome me into their homes. They would immediately tell me their stories because she was also a community leader. She was doing a lot for people there. She had opened up her apartment and had created a school for teenage girls, displaced girls and was running that and also kind of like a one woman NGO. So that was quite a remarkable thing to see.

PC: And what drove her to do all this, Deborah? I mean fixing for foreign journalists, helping refugees, widows, opening up a school for displaced girls, this one woman NGO, running it all out of her own home?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, I think there's a couple of factors here. And the first is that she'd been the first girl from her village—which was a small one outside of Baghdad—who had ever gone to high school and she was the first male or female to graduate from university. She was the daughter of the local Sheikh and her father had shouted down the men who protested that a village girl didn't need higher education just to tend to orange trees. And he said no one knows what the future holds and she goes. And he believed that she was going to do something great in the future. And so she was really devastated to watch the situation for Iraqi girls and women roll back 100 years, really, since the war began because they used to go to high school and university. And here were these girls you know who had missed the last four years of school and the country was falling back into illiteracy. So that was one of the things. And also she had recently lost her son, her oldest son who was 11 years old and she really felt, I think, driven to sort of lose herself in the work of helping others. It was just a way of coping with loss and death. And a lot of people pulled inward. I mean I met a lot of people who were really stunned and shocked and numb. And she, I think, coped by working for other people.

PC: How old was she?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Forty-two at the time.

PC: Just there, you were talking about what her life was like. And it's risky, in a sense, putting herself in by being so active on many fronts but particularly in working as a fixer for you and other foreign journalists. How big of a risk was it for her? Is it for her?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, it had resulted in her being kidnapped in Baghdad. I mean it was also because she was working for a humanitarian centre that the US had started and she was accused of being a spy. And so when she was such a prominent community leader in Damascus—and I think being a woman too, it was considered to outsiders kind of strange. Like how did this woman come out of nowhere? She doesn't have any resources. She's essentially—you know the fixer that everybody, any foreign journalist wants to work with. And she's so active. She was attracting a lot of attention. She had a bit of a reckless personality in the sense that she was fearless. And she really felt like what she was doing was important and that it made sense. Somebody had to do something. It was a mess and people's lives were in chaos and she was capable. And so, she did it. But of course, when you're not invisible anymore and when you've got also Western journalists who are with you, making you even more visible, certainly that puts you on the map.

PC: When did your—maybe not alarm bells, but that sort of gut feeling—come for you that Ahlam might be in trouble?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, I knew that she was being watched. That was clear pretty early on because she had seen a man outside her apartment building who was taking photographs of her, another couple of men following her and photographing her. And at first, she thought it was maybe her kidnappers in Iraq that had followed her over the border. That kind of things was happening. But then she got called into the Syrian intelligence office in her neighbourhood, the secret police. And they said you know we've sent three men to follow you and what are you doing? They can't keep up with you. And she said well, they must be out of shape. And they didn't like her attitude right away. And so she knew. They kept calling her in for meetings and they'd put some pressure on her. They wanted her to report back on any journalist she met and also any UNHCR workers and she adamantly refused. And so I knew that was going on but it was really about nine months after we'd started working together that things just really started to feel more unstable. It was really the morning that I was at her apartment when a group of men came for her that I really—it became absolutely clear that things had gone way too far.

PC: What happened?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: I would often go there in the mornings and before I started my work and just have a cup of tea and talk and also hear the latest news. And so I had gone over there as usual. And I felt something strange that morning. I was walking through the neighborhood and I just—I felt watched. And at the same time, you know I'm the only Westerner in the neighbourhood so that's not unusual, but people also knew me. So I thought I’m just being a little bit paranoid. And so I arrived there and about 15 minutes later, a knock came at the door and Ahlam stepped outside to the stairwell and immediately I felt the atmospheric pressure in the room change. I just knew and I thought I need to hide my notebook. I have names of people in this book. And there was no place where I could see that I could hide it. And then a man walks in and I knew that he was secret police even though he wasn't wearing a uniform. You could feel it. And he said to Ahlam about me, “Get rid of her.” And she came up to me and said, “Go. Go now.” And the way she said it was so different from how she usually spoke. She's very emotional and gregarious. And this was cold and flat and I knew something had gone badly wrong.

PC: Did you go?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: I left and I walked back to the sort of pilgrims hostel where I was staying. And you know she had said to me they just want me for a couple hours, this has happened before. But I didn't feel like it was normal. And I thought okay, just wait a few hours. Wait for her to call. And I knew I shouldn't call anyone because of course, I was being watched now. That was my impression. And anything I did with my phone—you have to register your phone with Syrian intelligence when you get a SIM card—so I didn't want to bring anybody else into this. So it was a time of real powerlessness and a sense of waiting game.

PC: How hard is it for you? You sit quietly because that's what you're supposed to do. But then you have to figure out answers. Where was she? Why was she taken? How worried—not how worried were you but I mean how hard was it to get those answers? Where is this—where is my friend, my fixer? Why was she taken? What can I do?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: And the hardest part was knowing that anyone that I phoned, that was a data trail. Anyone I e-mailed, that could be watched. And so there was this feeling of “I just have to wait right now.” And so I immediately started going through all my belongings and going through all the names in my notebook and tearing them up into pieces and deleting any texts and names from my phone. And so I waited a day and then I got a call from the Syrian journalist who introduced me to Ahlam the year before and he said come to my office, come right now. So I went to his office and he said she's been arrested. That's when I knew that this was much worse than before.

PC: Arrested for what, officially?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, that's what I wanted to know. I mean I didn't know and he didn't know either and he said she's been arrested because of you. And he said they think you're a spy for the Mossad or the CIA—which of course, you know if you've worked in the Middle East, it's not an unusual allegation.

PC: Yeah. Lived there for three years. Yeah.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Yeah. So it wasn’t—I said who did you hear this from? And I thought maybe he had connections and you know he probably did, but he said he just heard it from an Iraqi woman who worked for them. Then I thought okay, maybe this is just a rumour. I mean people immediately when something bad happens, they look for explanations, right? But he said get out of this neighbourhood but you can't leave the country because if you do, they can capture you at the border. So you have to stay. And that's when I started to really feel the walls closing in on me.

PC: Meaning what?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: The sense of you can't leave and you have to stay, but you can't do anything and you don't know how to connect to the people that can. So there was a real sense of essentially anything I said could be—how would what I say be viewed? Does it sound like I'm defending myself when I say I'm not a spy? Does it sound—do I sound innocent? Is he telling the truth? Who's he connected to, this journalist? And what's Ahlam really involved with? I knew that they had wanted her to spy on journalists but of course I'm a journalist. So it was a real sense of I need to stay but I need to go deeper undercover or it could cause more trouble for me. And I mean one of the first people I contacted of course was the UN Refugee Agency and they said they were working on it. But you know I wasn't hearing anything from them.

PC: As you're trying to track Ahlam down and get answers, you also had to leave Syria and the region entirely. How hard of a decision was that for you?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, I ended up staying for three months looking for her, finding out which prison she was in and what the charges were against her, and also organizing a lot of the journalists who had worked for her. And she was very beloved by groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. She'd worked Foreign Reports and by obviously—you know the many, many, many journalists that she'd helped to bring the news of the world to our attention. And so, informing them was a way of getting them to put pressure on—you know the only group that we knew could probably do something was the UN. But nothing was happening. I mean she was gone. And so at a certain point, I felt like within Syria, it was very difficult to make phone calls, e-mails without being anxious about the effects of those. So I felt like I had to leave in order to continue to work for her outside. And yet, I also felt like you know there's these prisoners we hear about in Guantanamo, prisoners in prisons all over the world, they can disappear for years and she could be one of them.

PC: What did you find out about Ahlam’s whereabouts?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: I found out that she was being held in a prison, in a neighborhood of Damascus called Duma that had a woman's prison and she'd been charged with first of all, giving information to reporters. Well, that's pretty obvious, she was doing that. And also that she'd been taking money for refugees and using it to buy guns and run them to Iraqi militias and also involved in human smuggling.

PC: What's happened to her in the end? How'd she get out—she got out, right?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: She got out. Yes.

PC: I can hear the smile on your voice.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Yes. After five months, a week before, I got a call in the middle of the night from Amnesty International at my home in Vancouver. And they said that they wanted to know what had happened from my perspective and they also said that we’re warning the UN that we're going to go public in a week if she's not released. And in a week, she was released. So she was flown out, actually taken straight to Damascus airport with her two children. Then they flew her to Bulgaria and then off to JFK Airport and to Chicago. And that's her new home. That's where she's living.

PC: With her children.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Yes. With her two kids.

PC: How are they doing?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, her daughter is 17 and just left for university two weeks ago and is a star student who received six scholarship offers and chose one of them. Is an absolutely wonderfully adapted girl and her son is at community college and he's doing very well as well.

PC: And how’s Ahlam?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, you know it's up and down. I mean she's got what we call you know short- form PTSD and it's not just from five months in Syrian prison, a lot of it has to do with some of the terrible things that she went through in Iraq and observed. So she has her ups and downs but she's a resilient person and she's working with refugees in Chicago.

PC: Deborah, you know you mentioned that fixers are kind of invisible and they do this work for a lot of different reasons. They rarely become the story. Why did you want to tell Ahlam’s story in this book?

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Well, first of all, I think she is one of those people who represents so many other’s lives that have been shaped and harmed by war, but also that her courage is representative of a lot of these invisible fixers who don't get credit. We never see them. And yet all of us as journalists, we rely on these local experts and the world does too. The stories that we hear are coming because of people like her and it seemed to me that this sort of behind the scenes look was an important way of understanding the—often the real heroes of the story aren't the ones who get the credit. So it seemed like it was about time.

PC: Well, as a fellow journalist who has worked with fixers all over, I just want to thank you for telling one person's story, but it does say so much about the work that they do for so many of us and for Canadians to get these stories out. Thanks Deborah, it's been good to talk to you.

DEBORAH CAMPBELL: Thank you, Piya.

PC: Deborah Campbell is a journalist and she's also an author of A Disappearance in Damascus. We talked to Debra from Vancouver. So if you want to talk to us about Deborah or anything else you hear on this program, you can add your voice. Many ways to get in touch, you can tweet us @thecurrentCBC. You can tweet me, my handle is @piya. That is P-I-Y-A. Facebook.com/cbcthe current or you can e-mail us by going to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you’re there, click on the contact link. That's how to get in touch with us via e-mail. And also on our website, pictures, links, download the podcast www.cbc.ca/thecurrent is the place to do all of that. Alright. Coming up next, a whole lot of love. We'll speak with two members of a polyamorous relationship and hear just how widespread polyamorous relationships are in our country. Widespread enough that some say they should have more rights. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Polyamorous families want Canadian law to catch up with their relationships

Guests: Tia Thompson, Abhann Cupper Scott, John-Paul Boyd, Nick Bala

PC: Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

I don’t want to have to divorce my husband in order to marry my partner so that we can be in one country together. But we have discussed it.

PC: That’s Shannon Ouellette, an Alberta woman who spoke with CBC recently about her family. And as you heard her there correctly, she has a husband and she has a partner. Shannon is in a polyamorous relationship.

SOUNDCLIP

About three and a half years ago, we made the decision to open up our marriage and we each have additional partners. I have a male partner who lives in England and my husband has a female partner who lives here with us.

PC: Well, a survey this year—the first of its kind in our country—heard from more than 500 Canadian polyamorous and their families. It was conducted by the Canadian Research Institute for Law and Family, which says the number of Canadians living in polyamorous relationships is significant and it’s one that is believed to be growing. Polyamorous have more than one committed intimate partner at a time and unlike polygamy, polyamorous relationships are completely legal, though they do face unique legal issues.

SOUNDCLIP

My husband’s partner is going to school and you know we’re paying for her schooling and we don’t get to claim her tuition or books. And my husband doesn’t get to claim her as a dependent even though you know we are supporting her.

PC: Well, today we are asking whether Canadian law needs to adapt to reflect the reality of polyamorous relationships. Tia Thompson and Abhann Cupper Scott are two members of a three-person relationship and they’re both with us from Ottawa. Hi.

TIA THOMPSON: Hello.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: Hello.

PC: Tia, let me begin with you. Tell us more about your family. How do you define your relationship?

TIA THOMPSON: So the poly community would recognize us as an open triad poly family.

PC: What does that mean?

TIA THOMPSON: So that means that there is three of us and essentially we’re all dating each other. But we are open to having other partners in whatever configuration that might be. And in the case of Abhann, there is another partner in Toronto, occasionally.

PC: Okay. So you don’t all live under the same roof.

TIA THOMPSON: Abhann and I and our other partner Braelor do. We all live in Ottawa. But there are other partners that live in Ottawa but not with us. And then the one in Toronto.

PC: Okay. You can appreciate that this is new territory for a lot of people to hear about. So just—I mean you don’t have to get into too much detail, but just tell us what your family—how it operates, how it works.

TIA THOMPSON: Essentially, we’re just—we’re a normal family that has a whole lot of love to give to a whole lot of people. We all sit down and eat dinner together and we adopted two cats, Kylo and Anakin. And all of our phones are filled with pictures of our cats and we all work. We all watch Orange is the New Black.

PC: [Laughs] Totally typical then, yes.

TIA THOMPSON: Yeah.

PC: Let me bring you in. Explain for people again who don’t know much about this, the difference between polyamory and polygamy.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: I think my experience in terms of telling people about family is a lot of times people will go ooh, I know about that. I know the show Big Love or other series. And I go oh, you do a little bit, but at the same time we’re very different. Different from those families in that we’re not driven by a religion to take on other partners, even though as Wiccans, that fits with our philosophies and our beliefs very much. And we also—a lot of the families that people have read about especially in media and on TV shows, it’s one husband and multiple wives and there’s sometimes issues in terms of equal say and equal voices in those relationships. And polyamory—ideally, not always is the case—but ideally is about a shared voice together and equal communication and equal rights.

PC: Mhm. And Tia, so there’s three of you in this triad and as you say, other people who are sometimes there and sometimes aren’t. In terms of the legal challenges, what are the biggest ones that you face as polyamorists?

TIA THOMPSON: I think the biggest one for us is medical benefits and a lack of legal precedent. So even if we were able to contact all of the agencies and say here's our situation, please accommodate us and they were willing to do that, what I am told by hospitals and by work forms when I try and put down you know partner number two is I don't have a box for that. I can't check that. I can put it in a note in a different area but essentially, I can't indicate on an emergency contact form, next of kin, even on taxes” partner number two.

PC: So if you get benefits from your workplace, what you're saying is that you can only have one “spouse” on a form. So only one of the people in your intimate three-person relationship benefits from your benefits.

TIA THOMPSON: Well, they’re Abhann’s benefits, so they know a little bit more about that one.

PC: Okay. Abhann, go ahead. How does that work?

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: Oh. So I have medical benefits at work and I'm actually really fortunate in that of all the people I know, family and friends included, I have the best benefits so I'm very privileged in that way. But at the same time, despite the support of all my co-workers, et cetera, we had to have a series of serious conversations as a family to choose Braelor or Tia as my “spouse.”

PC: Because again, only one of them gets the benefits.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. So we anticipated that Tia’s needs may be greater financially. So she is now receiving medical benefits.

PC: Right. And Braelor gets none of them.

TIA THOMPSON: Correct.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: No. And we’re paying out of pocket.

PC: Okay. And then Abhann, tell me about—because Tia just mentioned this—taxes.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: Yeah. So for most poly families, there's not a lot of information out there and there's also a lot of websites that can have some confusing or misleading information based on where they are, et cetera. But you have to be really, really careful because instead of most families just telling the truth about their situation on tax forms, et cetera, we have to remember to reflect the truth that we've decided upon legally. Because I chose Tia, therefore I have to reflect that in taxes and OSAP, Tia’s OSAP, et cetera. So it's not the legal truth of our family. It's what's legally required of us.

PC: And so you guys have been together for four years?

TIA THOMPSON: Yes.

PC: Yeah, okay. And so Tia, when you think not of the past but of the future, like building this life, the three of you together, what legal issues do you worry about the most?

TIA THOMPSON: I think the biggest thing is if something were to happen—most people don't like to think about that—but if something happens, what's going to happen to my two partners? We're very fortunate that our families are supportive of us. But if they weren't, if they was some kind of legal contention, would they end up with nothing? Would the relationship that we have built over you know the last four years and hopefully the next many, many, many years—would that essentially be washed away because there is no legal protection for us? We can't be legally bonded together and therefore have no legal protection for those relationships.

PC: And so, what kind of changes would you like to see in our laws, in Canadian laws for you and other polyamorists?

TIA THOMPSON: Legal protection. It doesn't have to come in the form of tax benefits or tax breaks of any kind. But when we go into a hospital, when something happens, we don't want to have to worry if you know spouse number two or the other wife or wife's husband is going to be asked to leave.

PC: But those aren't laws, right? Those are practices or hospital rules, right?

TIA THOMPSON: Correct. And unfortunately, if there's no law telling them that they have to do something different, they'll stick with their policies and procedures until the law tells them otherwise.

PC: Abhann, how do you want to see Canadian law change?

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: I think one of my big concerns is going forward. Not in the near future but at some point, we have discussed having children. And it's interesting to look at places like BC that have adoptive laws that allow for up to four parents to be on birth certificates. And that's exciting because originally it was meant to support blended families which are becoming more and more frequent but it actually helped poly families at the same time. But on the flip side of that, I actually went online and tried to go through the process of registering a child, like a birth certificate. And the only options available are mother only, mother and father, mother and partner. So you would have to go through another process other than the speedy convenient process of registering your child online. And all parents have to be present for that registration so you’d have to contact Vital Statistics, et cetera. So I think for me, it's just—for me, I've never understood growing up as part of a four-person household and all of us being covered, me and my sister and my two parents. And then now living in a three-person household and seeing the struggles that we face in terms of covering Braelor’s medical expenses, et cetera. And just having a [unintelligible], et cetera.

PC: Good to talk to you both. Thank you Abhann and Tia.

TIA THOMPSON: Thank you so much.

ABHANN CUPPER SCOTT: Thank you.

PC: Tia Thompson and Abhann Cupper Scott are two members of a three-person relationship. They were in Ottawa. Well, for more on this, we're joined by John-Paul Boyd. He's a lawyer, legal academic and researcher and the executive director of the University of Calgary-affiliated Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family. He conducted the national survey of polyamorous families and he's with us from Calgary. Hi.

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Good morning.

PC: What prompted your research on polyamorists in Canada? What kind of issues were you looking at?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Well, I practised family law in Vancouver for 14 years before coming to the institute in Calgary and towards the end of my act of practice, I began to be contacted by an increasing number of people involved in polyamorous relationships seeking advice about issues such as the parental mobility, leaving the relationship, means of formalising the relationship and protecting people's interests. And that continued after I came to Calgary, with couples asking me questions about for example, we’re planning on getting married and how will our marriage affect our ability to sponsor the immigration of our same-sex partner?

PC: Give me a concrete example, John-Paul, when you raise those things whether it's when your time lawyering and doing this research. So you brought up the example there of two people who are Canadian presumably, the third person is from out of country.

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: American.

PC: Yeah. So like how does that work currently?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Well, it doesn't work very well. You know sponsorship is usually limited to one other person, a spouse and of course, if the people living in Canada had married, that would eliminate their opportunity to say well, we're marrying this person. So it creates all sorts of roadblocks that they hadn't anticipated and ultimately I suspect that what they wound up doing was either not marrying or deferring their marriage in order that one of them might be able to bring the American individual in as a spouse.

PC: Okay, so you do this survey. What did it reveal about polyamory and polyamorous families in Canada?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Well, the demographics were actually really quite interesting. Our research showed that the lion's share of people involved in polyamorous relationships lived in three provinces: British Columbia, followed by Ontario, followed by Alberta. They tended to be young, with almost 75 per cent of respondents being 44 years or younger compared to only one quarter of the Canadian population. They tended to have higher incomes than the Canadian population as a whole and they tended to be far better educated with something like 37 per cent of our respondents having an undergraduate degree, compared to 17 per cent of Canadians and 19 per cent of them having a postgraduate or professional degree compared to eight per cent of Canadians.

PC: And I said in the introduction—I can't remember the exact number I said—I think 500 families was the number. Some people may think polyamory in 2016 in Canada is on the fringe. Are they right?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: It's certainly less common. I don't know if I would go so far as to call it a fringe sort of thing but there are established on and offline communities that are dedicated to improving information and knowledge about polyamorous relationships and providing support to those involved in those kind of relationships. So it's not the case that it's a few people in some small town in British Columbia who don't have a presence. Our respondents indicated overwhelmingly that in their view, the number of people involved in polyamorous relationships was increasing. And an even larger number said that the number of people who are openly involved in polyamorous relationships like Tia, Abhann and Braelor, are increasing.

PC: Hmm. I'm glad you brought up BC in the sense of you know bountiful BC, infamous for polygamy at least in the headlines and that story that we are all become familiar with. How do you respond to people who would say if we recognize polyamory legally, that that will lead to the state, our country, our jurisdictions recognizing polygamy?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Well, right now, polygamy is criminalized by section 293 of the Criminal Code. That section recently withstood a constitutional reference in British Columbia in 2013. And the difference between the polyamorous and the polygamous relationships, like I think it was Tia who was talking about this—the Bountiful, British Columbia is you know it's the fundamentalist Mormons and as such, those polygamous relationships are patriarchal and faith-based. The people that we spoke to, who are engaged in polyamorous relationships, overwhelmingly expressed values such as the importance of equal treatment of the members of their relationship regardless of gender or gender identity. That statement was supported by 94.6 per cent of respondents. Other respondents, other commonly held values were about the importance of equal treatment regardless of parenting status. And then of course when we asked people about you know what's important to you in this relationship, 98 per cent said that the values of transparency and openness were important. So I think that we're talking about two different kinds of relationship. In Bountiful, we have relationships that are motivated by faith of some nature and are prescribed by God. On the other hand, the polyamorous relationships are largely characterized by adults who freely and intentionally enter into relationships with more than one other person at a time.

PC: Okay. We heard from Tia and Abhann talking about taxes and going to the hospital and medical benefits. Real life, real practical things and a lot of those things fall under provincial law. And as you said in your survey, there are specific provinces that have more polyamorous relationships than others. How well does provincial laws—do provincial laws—address the need to polyamorists across our country? I mean is there—if you want to be in a polyamorous relationship legally, is there a better place to be in Canada? Province-wise?

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Oh yeah. If you happen to be in a polyamorous relationship, you want to be in British Columbia and failing British Columbia, then in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. If you are looking for the province that's the least friendly towards polyamorous relationships, it's Alberta. And what I'm speaking about here, the provincial laws on domestic relations which offer rights and responsibilities to people involved in certain recognized sorts of relationships and following a relationship breakdown can result in orders about the care and control of children, child support and spousal support. In British Columbia, for example, the definition of spouse which is the linchpin for every sort of legal right and responsibility— from family law matters to qualifying for medical coverage under the provincial MSP plan to employment insurance to how they calculate WCB payments and all the rest—in British Columbia, a spouse is defined as somebody who is married to someone else or somebody who's lived in a marriage-like relationship for at least two years with someone else. So those definitions of spouse are clearly two- way, right? You know I can be a spouse to this other person and that other person is a spouse with me. But the law is not written in such a way as to prevent people from having multiple spouses at the same time. On the other hand, in Alberta, laws like the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act, very clearly restrict you from not being married—well, being an adult interdependent partner—and not being able to have another adult interdependent partner by being an adult interdependent partner with someone.

PC: [Laughs]

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Sorry. It’s a terrible phrase.

PC: A mouthful.

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Yes.

PC: Okay. Well, let me just get you John-Paul to hold on for just a bit. I want to bring someone else into our conversation. That’s Professor Nick Bala who specializes in family law at Queen’s University. Nick, you've been listening in and you're in Kingston. Hi.

NICK BALA: Hello. Good morning.

PC: Good morning. What do you think? Is there a need to reform family law in our country to recognize polyamorous relationships?

NICK BALA: Well, I think that John-Paul has done some really interesting research. I would certainly like to see more research done before we would take legislative steps. And in particular, when we talk about polygamy, one of the reasons—I think one of the central reasons—that it has been found, their laws are valid prohibiting polygamy is because it's generally—not always—but generally harmful to children and women. At the other or and other end, we've recognized and fully support same-sex marriage. We have research that same sex partners can be as good parents as opposite sex partners. And here, we’re kind of in a grey area. So one of the questions that I have—and John-Paul is doing path-breaking research here, but we don't know—what's the effect of polyamory on children who are being raised in those relationships? Many of them don't have children, it's not illegal and I think some of the things that lawyers like John-Paul and others in practice are doing to help facilitate those relationships are appropriate, drafting wills and so on, and contracts. But before we go into a more substantial kind of legal reform effort, I say I would like to see more research and frankly know what the effects are. Is this a desirable situation in which to be raising children? It might well be but if there are significant concerns about the relationships, one of the concerns that I would have is how stable are these relationships? Are there relations where there are a lot of partners moving in and out? And what is the effect on that of children? So those are some of the questions I'd like to look at. The other thing—and I think this is coming out is—any kind of or many reforms would be I think very complex and challenging because the relationships are both very diverse and very complex. How does one have a legislative scheme? As John- Paul has pointed out, we do have some legislation that deals with these issues and certainly you know broadening some of our legislation right now. In many provinces, we don't deal adequately with unmarried married common-law couples and I think some of the issues could fit into legislative reforms around that. It was mentioned the issue of three parents. We do have a number of provinces that recognize the child may have more than two parents and that we should be, in appropriate cases, recognizing and supporting that. Other provinces have to reform their laws.

PC: You know Nick, some of the questions that you raised there in terms of the kind of research you would like to see being done, vaguely sounds—you know sort of has echoes of things we used to talk about when we were discussing gay marriage and people say well, what's the effect on the children? How would this work? And I guess that leads me to this question: is this for you seen through the lens of a legal issue or a fight for social acceptance?

NICK BALA: Well, I think that some of the comments that are being made and you know we talked at one time you know gays and lesbians were for understandable reasons—many of them felt they had to be in the closet. And certainly—and I think that John-Paul's research establishes this—many people who are in polyamorous relationships don't want to disclose it. And it may partly be the social opprobrium. You know the question is maybe you know family members, I mean relatives, friends might say you know if that's the kind of relationship you want, I'm very uncomfortable with it. And you know one of the issues that has come up, we've had a few cases—I should say the Canadian courts have had to deal with cases sometimes involving custody of children—and they've said it's not necessary. You're not necessarily precluded from having custody of children if you're in a polyamorous relationship. We have to focus on the interests of a specific child but that other children in the community, some of the parents might say well, I don't want my child going to a household where this is the lifestyle. So there are going to be social issues, both with communities, with relatives, with friends. And I think that typically law reform has followed social change and you talked about gays and lesbians. You know we had a long period of both social change and a lot of courage by gays and lesbians who were prepared to face discrimination. But we did actually have research. Before we changed legislation and before we had the charter challenges, there are actually people—social scientists and lawyers had done research and we could show that this was a beneficial relationship. Conversely with polygamy, we have social science and research that shows this is often a harmful relationship and that's why we have these different legal regimes in part and we haven't yet got that research. John-Paul is getting us started and that's great. But there's more to be done.

PC: Well, let me go back to the researcher, John-Paul, just to react to some of the things that Nick had to say.

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Well, I think what's important to remember now is that we're not talking about legitimizing a relationship. These relationships exist and they are not prohibited by the law. And adults are engaging in them right now. When polyamorous individuals are talking about you know the law and how it impacts their lives, they're largely talking about it in terms of their ability to be covered by OHIP in Ontario or MSP in British Columbia to get benefits that are appropriate to the family of their size, under EI, to be covered by CPP and to be able to divide their pensionable credits with all of the spouses that they have or to be covered by old age security and the old age survivor's benefits and the allowance. So we're talking about social benefits and the ability to be covered by the existing laws that that address family breakdown, to deal with issues like the care of children, the payment of spousal support and the payment of child support. So we're not talking about legalizing relationships that are already legal. We're talking about extending coverage under benefits and rights and responsibilities of the laws on domestic relations to people that are in family structures like this.

PC: John-Paul and Nick, nice to talk to you both. Thank you.

NICK BALA: Thank you.

JOHN-PAUL BOYD: Thank you very much, Piya.

PC: John-Paul Boyd is a lawyer, legal academic and researcher and the executive director of the Canadian Research Institute for the Law and the Family. He's in Calgary. Professor Nick Bala teaches at Queen’s University Faculty of Law. He's in Kingston, Ontario. We do want to hear from you. What do you think? Should people in polyamorous relationships have more rights? If you're in one, we would love to hear your thoughts on this story and the legal and other challenges that are set forth. To send us an e-mail, go to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, click on the contact link. On Facebook and Twitter: @thecurrentCBC and I am @piya. P-I-Y-A. That is the program for today. Well, we started today's show by talking about Monsanto and the controversy that has dogged that company for years as a producer of GMO seeds. Well, Monsanto has an even longer history than that, including as many of you know, as a producer of the notorious insecticide DDT. So we're going to wrap up the week with some classic Joni Mitchell. A song that namechecks that chemical and urges farmers to put it away. From 1970, this is Joni Mitchell with “Big Yellow Taxi.” I’m Piya Chattopadhyay. Thank you so very much for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: “Big Yellow Taxi” - Joni Mitchell]

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