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The Current Transcript for March 31, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Funding needs to come from somewhere. But we need to change those rules as the social morays change, and as the expectations of the public change.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on the issue that has sideswiped presidential contenders in the U.S., and now haunts more than one Canadian political leader: the lure of lavish funding from lobbyists and others with vested interests who are encouraged to pay into party coffers. News that the Wynne cabinet is assigned fundraising targets of up to half a million dollars per minister has the provincial Liberals scrambling to explain, even as they hosted one more lavish dinner last night. In a moment, tempest in a teapot or pork in a barrel? Also today…

SOUNDCLIP

Iraq. Must be compelled to disarm, and Iraq has to understand that if it does not disarm, there will be consequences for its failure to disarm.

AMT: It was back in 2003 that then Foreign Minister Bill Graham stood next to his U.S. counterpart, Colin Powell, with tough talk on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But Canada, already with troops in Afghanistan, would not join in; and Bill Graham would find himself navigating our war, their war, and the war on terror. First in foreign affairs, then as defense minister. At one point, he was on the no-fly list. He's put it all, the laudable and the questionable, in a new memoir. Bill Graham joins me in half an hour. And when you are a Mexican drug lord like El Chapo Guzman, you can have your very own dedicated balladeer, strumming odes to your legendary status in a narco-corrido.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Mexican traditional folk music, singing in Spanish]

AMT: That particular narco-corrido band's last performance ended in a lot of death, and now such bands are outlawed in three Mexican states. Critics are asking why the war on drugs has become a war on dirges. We'll explain in an hour as we check in on the stories we've been tracking. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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Aggressive party fundraising in Ontario needs to be addressed, says Martin Regg Cohn

Guests: Martin Regg Cohn, John Gerretsen, Leslie Seidle

SOUNDCLIP

What's very important is that the public, who need information about who's donating and what the interaction is, that that is available. And we have already, we've already made that more transparent in terms of posting who makes donations, but we are going to continue to make changes, we'll bring that plan forward in the fall.

AMT: She may have been short on details, but Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says there's change afoot for her province's political fundraising rules. That promise follows revelations in the Toronto Star that Premier Wynne's cabinet ministers have party fundraising quotas as high as half a million dollars. Those expectations to raise cash are now raising concern over whether Ontario's cabinet ministers are under pressure to court corporate money. And Ontario is not alone in facing this scrutiny. Martin Regg Cohn is the Ontario Political Columnist for the Toronto Star. He is the journalist who broke the story of what he calls the Wild West of fundraising. He's with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning.

MARTIN REGG COHN: Good morning.

AMT: As high as half a million dollars?

MARTIN REGG COHN: Yeah, that's the top amount for the most bankable ministers. The range is in about $200,000-400,000 for the more influential cabinet ministers, and that's something they have to try to reach every year, and it's part of the untold story. It’s what’s behind the scenes. You mentioned the fundraiser last night for the Heritage Dinner, which is really the mother of all fundraisers, the biggest event on the Liberal calendar. But that's only part of the picture. It’s what's behind the scenes that's most troubling, because of the way corporations and unions are targeted, and cabinet ministers are held to account for that.

AMT: So there was a dinner last night, how much a plate, or how much a table?

MARTIN REGG COHN: So it's about $1,600 a head, but most of it is sold to corporations and unions by the table. And so a victory table, for example, which buys you commission into a cocktail, is $18,000 a table. And it’s, as I say, mostly corporate high flyers. But again, that's the sumptuous, sort of swank dinner that political reporters like you and I will see when we're covering these events. That's just part of the picture, it's the behind the scenes assignments that these Cabinet ministers have hanging over their heads that is, I think, more troubling, because it shows you the extent to which the Liberal Party in Ontario relies on corporate and union donations in a way that the federal parties don't.

AMT: And so, in fact, you have written that until you started looking at who is assigned what, other cabinet ministers didn't even know what their colleagues were assigned.

MARTIN REGG COHN: That’s right. The Ontario Liberal Fund, which is the fundraising arm of this governing party, basically takes the ministers aside and has conversations with their senior staff; telephones, meetings, and tries to negotiate these quasi-quotas, as I call them. And it's something that ministers keep very much on the hush-hush, it's not discussed, it's not written down. And most of the ministers are very curious to know what the other ministers are being hit up for.

AMT: But they're told they have to do this, that there's an expectation on them to do this.

MARTIN REGG COHN: There’s an expectation. I don't want to give the impression that they get decapitated and that they are removed from cabinet summarily and marched out of the room if they don't reach their target. I think the pressure is as much psychological as it is political. There is a sense that you have to do it, and frankly, my sense is they target the ministers who are the most vulnerable or nervous about their status. Some ministers tell them to get lost.

AMT: But you say they also target the most bankable, the ones with the biggest portfolios.

MARTIN REGG COHN: Correct.

AMT: Finance, health, energy.

MARTIN REGG COHN: Finance. I think people are not surprised that the treasurer of Ontario is the most sought after by lobbyists, by the banks, by the insurance companies. What's interesting is that the health minister, Dr. Eric Hoskins, is also very. In the sights of the party and the donors, because he oversees a 52 billion-dollar a year health care budget. He's in charge of nursing homes, he's in charge of regulating the pharmaceutical companies, so you can see the obvious synergy. And that's why stakeholders will often have these very private and focused evenings with cabinet ministers, like the health minister, or other ministries. The transportation minister, let's say. And so that's, when the premier talks about transparency, as she did in your clip, this idea that it's all aboveboard, you just have to look it up. The fact is, we don't know what the donors are contributing that particular sum of money for. So if it's twenty or thirty thousand dollars, is that because they were feeling generous and just wrote a check, or is it because they got a private audience with the premier and her minister of energy, let's say? That's the issue, is connecting the dots.

AMT: Are cabinet ministers comfortable doing this?

MARTIN REGG COHN: No, they're not. A couple of them are so good at it, they can't help themselves. But it's very clear that they don't like the system; nobody really likes the system. And by the way, the donors don't particularly like the system, because they're being hit up relentlessly by the governing party: pay up, or else. It's not put quite that explicitly, but there is clear pressure. With the ministers, I think, I think journalists who write about this are doing the Liberal party a favour, and saving it from itself.

AMT: And so, we’re talking about political fund raising. How does that impact the relationship then, between the Ontario government and the lobbyists? Or the people, you list big pharma, big banks, big insurers, big developers--

MARTIN REGG COHN: [interposing] You must not forget--

AMT: [interposing] Big breweries.

MARTIN REGG COHN: Big beer, yes. We can’t forget big beer. So I think there’s this idea that there's a direct trade-off. I think the development industry, the land developers are the ones that will have to be watched the most closely, because there's a very direct quid pro quo that they seek. I think in general, I wouldn’t argue that there is a direct trade off most of the time; where you see the problem is in access. There's no question that if you give tens of thousands of dollars to a governing party, your phone calls will be returned faster. And you will get an audience. And politicians can cry as long as they want about being open to everybody, and we know that's not true.

AMT: So we're talking access and influence. They're not paying for a specific decision, but they have ongoing influence because of the money and the closeness and the access they get.

MARTIN REGG COHN: It puts them higher up in the pecking order. A lot of liberals accosted me last night, for example, at this fundraiser, and said, you know, we've never traded influence. We've never done this. And then you ask them, well, what if you lose the next election, are you comfortable with the Tories having this kind of sway over the fundraising process? And they feel completely tightened up, and say, well, you know that would be problematic. And equally, the Progressive Conservative opposition today here says that this is, it's open season. That this is completely, puts the cabinet ministers in a completely untenable situation. So if the shoe is on the other foot, I think it becomes clear that it's just not a good situation.

AMT: So the premier says she's going to change fundraising rules?

MARTIN REGG COHN: So she has said in the last week that she is going to start phasing in changes by year's end. We don't know how long that will take. And she's making this new argument that it was phased in in Ottawa, so we need to phase it in in Ontario. You can't do it abruptly. But let's remember, this was done, it was completed, completely abolished 10 years ago in Ottawa. By Prime Minister Stephen Harper, by the way. Jean Chrétien started it a few years earlier. So we've had ten years already to know this was coming, the idea that we need a few more years to get ready, I think ignores the chronology here.

AMT: Okay, Martin Regg Cohn, thanks.

MARTIN REGG COHN: Thank you.

AMT: Martin Regg Cohn writes the Ontario Politics column for the Toronto Star. He joined me in Toronto. We did request an interview with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, she was unavailable. Well, my next guest has experienced the Ontario Liberal Party’s fundraising system first hand. John Gerretsen is a former Attorney General of Ontario. We've reached him in Kingston. Hello!

JOHN GERRETSEN: Good morning to both of you.

AMT: In your time in office, what was your experience with the fundraising system that Martin was just outlining?

JOHN GERRETSEN: Well first of all, I would say that Martin’s got it right on. I think he's described the system in the way in which actually operates. I have no quarrel with anything he said. Well, when I came into cabinet back in 2003, we would have a meeting at some point in time where the chief fundraiser would come in with cabinet and perhaps with caucus, as well, and there were suggestions made that, you know, in order for the party to win the next election, money had to be raised. And let's not forget, it takes about five to ten million dollars per election for each party to run a good election. So money is required, and the real issue is does the money come from the private sector, through corporate donations, through individuals, through the unions; or does it come from the public sector? One of the things that I've been advocating for years, that there has to be a much greater subsidy system so that much more money comes out of the public purse. And some people don't like that, but the reality is, if you want to run elections, it's going to cost money, and the money has to come from somewhere. Now, I can--

AMT: [interposing] Can I ask you just a little bit more about what you went through, how much were you expected to raise?

JOHN GERRETSEN: Well initially, I think in 2003, I was minister of municipal affairs and housing. I think the suggestion was about twenty thousand dollars. But I really, Martin is so correct. I had no idea what the other ministers were being asked. Oh, sometimes you would hear about it through your staff people as to what others were being asked to raise, and basically what it would mean is that you would have one or two fundraisers per year in Toronto with a lot of friendly lobbyists who may or may not be involved in one way or another with your ministry, in seeking regulatory changes or whatever. And my attitude always was, whatever money was raised in Toronto, stayed in Toronto.

AMT: So that was when you were municipal affairs minister. When you became attorney general, I did it increase?

JOHN GERRETSEN: I think my last suggestion when I was attorney general about two or three years ago was in the range of fifty thousand dollars. But I think the system knew my feeling towards the whole thing, so there was never much pressure put on me. And I, quite frankly, have no idea whether or not I reached those goals in any particular year.

AMT: Oh, okay. Because you know, now we're talking about one hundred thousand dollars to half a million dollars, numbers much higher.

JOHN GERRETSEN: Well, it’s certainly escalated over the numbers that I used to hear about, dramatically over the last four to five years.

AMT: So did, in your experience, did the donors expect something in return?

JOHN GERRETSEN: No, I wouldn't say there was any expectation. It was never sort of put directly that way. But perhaps your staff people who arranged most of your meetings with outside individuals who were interested in government policy in one way or another made it easier for some of these people to meet with you. I think it's also fair to say that most Ontario cabinet ministers, of whatever political stripe, are pretty well accessible to anybody. And it's not through the ministry offices, then it's through their constituency offices. Because quite often, people would phone my constituency office here in Kingston to try to get a meeting with me over issues that were basically ministerial issues, as well. I never granted those meetings very much, but--

AMT: So they didn’t necessarily have to pay for access, but did it make you uncomfortable?

JOHN GERRETSEN: Oh absolutely. You know, one of the nice things about getting out of politics, and I enjoyed my 19 years there, and I was mayor before that for eight years here in Kingston. I truly enjoyed being involved in the public policy process. But one of the nice things was that once I was out of it, I didn't have to raise another-- I hated the fundraisers. I'll be honest with you. I absolutely hated to fundraise money, and that's why I was always saying, you know, more of the money should come out of the public purse. And I think that Chrétien and Harper, I guess, did that a number of years ago, when they made some significant changes federally. And those kind of changes, and even more than that, have to come at the provincial level, as well. We have to take the money out of politics. Public policy decisions should be made purely on what’s in the best interest in that particular area, for the people of Ontario. And I'm not saying that there is any direct correlation between somebody giving you money and a decision being made, but it's human nature. You may look at an issue just slightly, in a slightly different way when you know that a major funder of a particular organization has come, has an interest in a particular issue. I'm not saying it happens. I've never seen any direct connection over the years, I'll be honest with you. But the perception is as important as the reality of the situation, and the perception is that access is being gained at a much quicker speed if you donate to a particular party for a particular event.

AMT: You know, in Martin's reporting, cabinet ministers have said things, and others have said things like, well, this is democracy. Is it?

JOHN GERRETSEN: Well, democracy in the sense that anybody should be able to give money to any cause that they want to, I suppose, to that extent it's democracy. Look, the reality is most of my colleagues weren’t very comfortable with it, but we also realized that if you wanted to have enough money in the party to fight the next election, that party needs between eight to ten million dollars to fight that election three or four years down the road.

AMT: Okay. So--

JOHN GERRETSEN: [interposing] And of course, there are also ongoing costs of the party during the year any given year. I don't know what those numbers are, but probably in the range of two or three million dollars just to keep the party apparatus going. And by the way, this has been going on in Ontario for years, and it isn’t just the Liberals that did it; the Tories did it before that. And when you're in power, by-- and the NDP, as well. When you're in power, by the way, people want to talk to you a lot more, because you can actually do something about their situation, than when you're in opposition.

AMT: Well, I'm going to pick up on who's doing it with my next guest. So John Gerretsen, thank you.

JOHN GERRETSEN: Thank you very much to both of you, bye bye.

AMT: John Gerretsen, former Attorney General of Ontario, also former mayor of Kingston, Ontario. We reached him in Kingston. He is a former Attorney General of Ontario, as well as a former mayor of Kingston, Ontario. We reached him in Kingston. If this political fundraising uproar in Ontario sounds familiar, it's because we've been through this federally several times. You’ve heard the allusions to that. To get a sense of how the rules have changed in Ottawa, I'm joined by Leslie Seidle, a Research Director with the Institute for Research on Public Policy. He was a senior research coordinator for the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and party financing in the early nineties, 1990-91, that was called the Lortie Commission, for its chair, Pierre Lortie. Leslie Seidle joins me from Montreal. Hello!

LESLIE SEIDLE: Good morning.

AMT: Well, as you listen, what's the biggest concern about what this means to the public?

LESLIE SEIDLE: I think it corroborates the view that money can help draw greater connections between the business world and particularly, less so with unions, the business world and senior people in public office, particularly cabinet ministers. Your previous guest speaking to his experience said that the perception is that access is being gained. So, you know, at these cocktail parties where, I mean, the one organized by the Bank of Nova Scotia, I calculated that there must have been at least 22 people there at 7,500 a pop. Even at a gathering of that size, there aren't transactions taking place. You don't seal a deal. But you become better known; you may be known already, or your name is known, and so on. And as the previous guests mentioned, phone calls may get returned more easily, and so on. So it corroborates a perception of kind of closed circles where people have access. And this access, it's directly related to their business, it's related to their bottom line.

AMT: And, of course, we're talking about Ontario, but Tuesday, the Globe and Mail revealed that the three premier Christy Clark sometimes charges up to twenty thousand dollars for people who want to meet her. In Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley has faced reviews by the ethics commissioner over fundraisers. And in Quebec, of course, leading out of the Charbonneau commission inquiry, we saw the charges laid against a former minister related to fundraising and contracts. And, of course, Quebec has changed its fundraising laws now. How effective have the federal changes been in eliminating the potential for political influence through fundraising?

LESLIE SEIDLE: Well it's just on a very, very different scale. At the federal level, a person, businesses and unions are not allowed, can give a maximum of 1,525 a year. It's not increased in an election year. In Ontario, I calculated, in an election year, if you had lots of money to spend, you can give 33,250. You can give 9,975 to a party outside the campaign period, and then again during the campaign period, You can give 6,650 to the candidates of a party, and 6,650 to the associations of the party. So that's a province. And at the federal level, which is the entire country, the limit on what a citizen can give to political entities is 1,525.

AMT: Okay, so, just get away from the numbers for a minute, and we're almost out of time, but just briefly, we're seeing this play out in the U.S., too, about the big vested interests that put money into campaigns and influence and meetings. What's the lesson here for politicians?

LESLIE SEIDLE: Well, the lesson is that if you have a market that is too open, you open the door. But the U.S. case is really so very different, because there are no spending limits at all, and to the degree that there are contribution limits, you can drive a Mack truck through them and so on.

AMT: But of course, the discussion here today is the fact that there are loopholes in the spending limits that exist here.

LESLIE SEIDLE: No, our spending limits--

AMT: In Ontario.

LESLIE SEIDLE: Our spending limits are pretty solid in this country, the problem is contribution limits. They're either too high or there are none.

AMT: Right, okay.

LESLIE SEIDLE: As is the case in B.C.

AMT: And so again, I guess there's greater public scrutiny now, eh?

LESLIE SEIDLE: Well, it's two different parts of the cycle. We’re in pretty good shape on spending limits in this country. Not every province has it, for example, I don't think they yet have them in Alberta--

AMT: [interposing] No, I'm sorry, I misspoke. I was talking about contributions. But we have to leave it there, Leslie Seidle, thank you.

LESLIE SEIDLE: Pleasure.

AMT: Leslie Seidle is a Research Director with the Institute for Research on Public Policy. He joined us from Montreal. Well, what do you think about what we're talking about? You can tweet us, we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook or go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact Us link. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Sting]

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Bill Graham navigates war, peace and trade in his political memoir

Guests: Bill Graham

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Coming up, The Current’s Friday host Laura Lynch will join me to check in on your letters and tweets on everything from Canada's struggling NHL teams, to the trouble with the way we talk to our daughters about sex. But first, an inside look at a career devoted to the politics of war and peace.

SOUNDCLIP

We have always made clear that Canada would require the approval of the Security Council if we were to participate in a military campaign. Over the last few weeks the Security Council has been unable to agree on a new resolution authorizing military action. Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately, we were not successful. If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate.

AMT: March 17 of 2003, a dramatic moment in Canadian history when Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced that Canada would not join the so-called coalition of the willing in a war against Iraq. Bill Graham was the country's Foreign Minister at the time and he had to deal with the fallout of saying no to Canada's superpower neighbor and biggest trading partner. The ramifications were huge. And that is just one episode in a long line of policy decisions in which Bill Graham played a major role. Now the former Foreign Minister and former Defense Minister shares what it was like during those times in the Call of the World: A Political Memoir which hits the book shelves tomorrow. Bill Graham is with me in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome.

BILL GRAHAM: Good Morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What goes through your mind when you look at Iraq today with the rise of ISIS and you think back to that decision in March of 03?

BILL GRAHAM: I think back to so much of the lead up to when Mr. Chretien said that and all the meetings we had with Colin Powell and Jack Straw and so many of us Joschka Fisher, others, myself said to the Americans and the British at the time. Be careful of what you're going to unleash there if you're going to walk in you know if you do the old thing of the bull in the china shop. If you break the China you're going to have to--you own it. And Colin recognized that, but I don't think that the people in the Defense Department did recognize it. As you know, the United States history of what they did after the invasion of Iraq was a total catastrophe. They put people from the Defense Department instead of the State Department in charge. They had little or no understanding of the local situation they were getting into, the alienated the Sunni tribes in a way that they then subsequently had to try and purchase their allegiance with vast amounts of money three years later when they sent in new generals and a new leadership. The thing was just from the beginning to the end, a real a real disaster of foreign policy both in its conception and its implementation.

AMT: How much pressure were you under from George W. Bush's administration to join in that attack?

BILL GRAHAM: We were under a lot of pressure, both from the Bush administration and from the British as well. To be fair, Colin Powell was always extremely gentlemanly about everything that he ever did. And he always said, well we know you are a sovereign nation, you'll make a decision as a sovereign nation. But Paul Cellucci, President Bush himself was pressuring a lot.

AMT: He actually offered to come to Ottawa and pitch.

BILL GRAHAM: Yes. Mr. Chretien phoned me one night and said, the President has offered to come personally and explain his evidence that they have. And he said, what do you think? And I said I don't think that's a very good idea. He said I’m glad you agree with me. He said I think we can say no on the phone much easier than we can say no to his face.

AMT: And he knew that, which is why he wanted to come. You had your own personal angst about the war because your son Patrick is a journalist. A very good journalist, he was in Iraq at the time. How hard was it to stay focused on the war debate knowing your son was in harm's way?

BILL GRAHAM: Yes, well that was a problem. And of course, subsequently when the invasion actually began you know and we were calling Patrick every day, where are you? And he actually was in the hotel. You’ll recall that the Americans shelled a hotel. A tank fired into a hotel with journalists in it and he was just one floor below the American journalist that was killed in that incident, so it was a dangerous place to be at that time for sure. It was a bit of a joke between Patrick and myself in the early times because I'd phone him and we'd say well who's listening to this conversation? We knew the Iraqis were and we knew the Americans probably were and certainly who else. However, I was able to follow him. He was writing his columns, we watched him on Global TV which was also a source of amusement because later when Paul Cellucci was very mad at me for the decision we made, he was sort of dressing me down. He said when I watched your son on Global TV, you know you should--what are you doing? And I told Patrick this and Patrick said well if he was watching, trying to understand foreign policy from Global TV, he was watching the wrong program.

AMT: You know it's interesting because Patrick wasn't--he was actually on the ground, reporting on the other side. He was in Fallujah for a long time. If they had known that his dad was a Canadian cabinet minister, he could have been in even greater danger, couldn’t he have?

BILL GRAHAM: That was much more dangerous, yes. When he went to Fallujah he went in disguise and he went--it was very dangerous, much more dangerous than when he was in Baghdad itself when it was being bombed. I mean because he was then really in a situation in which anyone could have grabbed him at any one time. Fortunately he was with friends of his. They took great care of him. He said that he was--he couldn't speak. So he wasn't asked to speak to anyone but, he did contact me at one time. Interesting enough I was in Washington and Colin Powell invited us to the White House to speak to Mr. Bush and on the way there, I spoke to Patrick. And he was in Fallujah and he was trying to get some people out across--a bit of a humanitarian effort to get people out of Fallujah. I told Colin this and I said could you know could the troops stop shelling this particular bridge? And I got you know Colin said your son is in the wrong side of the war in the wrong place and we had quite a discussion about that right in the White House.

AMT: You liked Colin Powell?

BILL GRAHAM: I did. I admired him a great deal and still do.

AMT: What do you think of Donald Rumsfeld?

BILL GRAHAM: He was a little trickier to admire. He was a--he had a great sense of humor and he had, he said those remarkable things that he did about unknown, unknowns and unknown things. But he was pretty prickly and you were either with him or against him. And certainly he was not--he was certainly not as amiable or in my view, not as affective to deal with as Colin.

AMT: Okay and Jean Chretien called you professor?

BILL GRAHAM: Yes. Yes, well you know whenever they—so did Colin Powell, called me the professor. Because I was a law professor so I would bring up these legal issues and so everybody would say come on now professor, this is not a court of law here. We've got of practical issues to decide.

AMT: They weren't expecting that?

BILL GRAHAM: Well there were very important legal issues. The clip you quoted Mr. Chretien speaking was in a very complicated legal issue as to whether or not the first resolution at the UN required a second resolution to authorize military action. And the British and the Americans interpreted the first resolution as enabling them to go ahead. When most of the world community including ourselves, the Germans, the French and others said no that resolution did not authorize the use of force. It required a second resolution and that's what basically Mr. Chretien was saying in the House of Commons so while it was a political statement, it was also a very important statement of international law.

AMT: And of course as we've seen things unfold over more than a decade now, the US has been mired in a lot of legal fights with its actions in war and Guantanamo and everything else. The law always has a role here.

BILL GRAHAM: The law has a very important role and sometimes it's cited on both sides to justify what they're doing and quite often it's difficult to sort out who's right and who's wrong.

AMT: I want to take you back to some interesting moments in your career. You write the then Prime Minister Chretien asked you to be his government's representative to the Liberal International. Yeah I'm sure a lot of listeners will be surprised that there is a Liberal International. What is it?

BILL GRAHAM: That's not the most prominent Institution in the in the in the pantheon but it's an important institution for liberal parties around the world and members of Liberal International, and it enables Liberalism, if you like, to be explained to countries. And my view always was that as a Canadian, it was good for Canadian Liberals to belong because we are influenced by the world itself. And we need to influence the institutions that shape that world like the United Nations and a lot of other world trade organization et cetera. Liberal International is one of those. It enables us to be in contact with liberal parties around the world that have like thinking people and try to advance liberal values. Its various presidents, when I was there John Alderdice from Northern Ireland was President. We usually had European presidents but it has membership in Brazil, in South America and Africa. And it's very helpful to a lot of small countries that are trying to struggle with these issues, it can be very helpful.

AMT: And why did the Prime Minister pick you to represent?

BILL GRAHAM: I was then on the Foreign Affairs Committee, so I was kind of like a logical person. But the previous representative had been Al Graham in the Senate. And the party really couldn't afford to pay for the travel of their representative, so he sort of jokingly said I'm choosing you but you're on your own here and you can afford it.

AMT: He thought you had deep pockets? [laughs] Now you write that joining Liberal International made you consider what it means to be a liberal. What does it mean to you?

BILL GRAHAM: This is true because Liberal International has parties in it, like the German Liberal Party is much more conservative than the Canadian Liberal Party and good friends of mine in Germany would say oh you guys in Canada are communists or socialists compared to us. And the Dutch for example Liberal Party, there are two liberal parties in Holland, one very progressive and one quite conservative, so it's a concept that is a bit flexible and different in different contexts. For example, as you know, the last Prime Minister of Australia, a great friend of Mr. Harper. That was the Liberal Party of Mr. Howard's. They were not members of Liberal International because they're very conservative party, so the name doesn't necessarily tell you exactly what's behind the label.

AMT: You've been part of a number of major policy decisions that still have an impact on Canadian life. I want to ask about the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. You were very involved in shaping the Canadian response to that deal what was your role?

BILL GRAHAM: Really, my role was at that point it was really more of a lead up in the election to NAFTA and you'll recall that in the 88 election, which I also ran in, we opposed the Free Trade Agreement.

AMT: That's right and people confuse the two. First there was that the FTA the Free Trade Agreement under Brian Mulroney and that was opposed by the Liberal Party at the time.

BILL GRAHAM: Right, under under John Turner, you’ll recall.

AMT: That's right. And so why did you and the Liberal Party support NAFTA?

BILL GRAHAM: Well the Free Trade Agreement had been in then for four years so, you don't unmake an omelet. You know once the omelet’s been made you have to sort of deal with it because the eggs have been broken. The important thing about why we ended up supporting NAFTA was that what the difference between NAFTA and the FTA, the FTA was just with the United States. NAFTA brought in Mexico. Now if the Americans had signed a deal exclusively with Mexico, our problem would have been then we would have been isolated. The Americans would have controlled from the center and we would have been isolated, they would have knocked us off one by one, Mexico this way, Canada that way. So we at that point felt we had to be a member of that agreement and in the end it has benefited ourselves, our trade with Mexico has expanded enormously as a result. We had some problems with it. You'll recall Mr. Chretien went to Seattle to meet Mr. Clinton immediately after the election and said listen we're unsatisfied with certain--dissatisfied with certain provisions and he got--Mr. Clinton would not agree to reopening the deal and having it go to Congress and perhaps have the whole thing unravel. He did agree to provide a presidential letter to Mr. Chretien on respect of some issues.

AMT: I'm asking because of course this is becoming an issue. Certainly in the Trump campaign, it's becoming an issue in the States right now right as the presidential nominations. And last month we interviewed Thomas Frank, the American journalist about the angry political mood in America and the support for Trump that kind of coalesces with that. This is how he connects it to NAFTA.

SOUNDCLIP

The elites in our country are universally in favor of it. You know there's nothing wrong--you know trade is this kind of, they use the word no brainer when they talk about it. Trade is so obviously good, how could anyone even question it? And it's been--it's fascinating because NAFTA has been really bad, both for working class Americans and for working class Mexicans. It's actually a really interesting thing. It's not like one country has done better than another country, it's one class in both countries has done better than another class.

AMT: Bill Graham, what do you make of that analysis?

BILL GRAHAM: Well there's a lot in there. I think it would take us a long time to deconstruct that argument but there is some--there's an element of truth of what he says. It is ironic to hear Mr. Trump railing about NAFTA and how it's draining jobs the United States. I mean if you go down to Mexico and talk to the Mexican indigenous farmers for example, their grain crops have been destroyed by cheap American imports of grain. So, they've paid a price for it too. What they've got instead is they have the maquiladoras. They have the manufacturing base in the northern states, so they become quite wealthy in some parts of the country as Mr. Frank suggested, and other parts have paid a price. So, it's a question, if you like, as to who's going to profit from these agreements. And there's no question about it there are always some that are better off and some that are not. In the main, most economists seem to agree that they are overall beneficial to the economy. In Canada, a small market would not exist if we were just exclusively on our own. We're a trading nation by nature and we're a trading nation by necessity. I mean if we didn't have trade with Asia, British Columbia would be a backwoods. I mean you'd just imagine where Canada would be if we didn't have the manufacturing trade with the United States, it's inconceivable.

AMT: So Donald Trump says if he's elected president he'll tear up NAFTA and negotiate a better deal for the US. What do you think?

BILL GRAHAM: You know, you go around tearing up international agreements then you have to renegotiate them. The British are going through a really difficult time in the moment on this Brexit issue. If they vote in favor of leaving the European Union, they are going to spend years and years and years trying to figure out how do they get renegotiate all those agreements to get their goods and services across borders and they're going to pay a huge price for it.

AMT: I want to ask you about another presidential contender right now because you became Foreign Affairs Minister soon after the September 11th attacks. After the attacks there were rumors that some of the hijackers came through Canada, this was misinformation. One of the people spreading of the misinformation was then New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Did you do any--you did some--you tried to get her to shut that down?

BILL GRAHAM: I know it was so--it was a hopeless cause. I had dinner with her one night. We were both in Munich for a famous conference on defense and actually, she asked to have dinner with me because she wanted to talk about the ferry that we were trying to put together between Rochester and Toronto, you remember that? She was quite anxious to see that go ahead because Rochester's a bit of a backwater at the moment, economically in New York State.

AMT: They’re listening to you, you know. Be careful what you say about Rochester. [laughs]

BILL GRAHAM: Well at that point it had economic problems and she felt that this would be helpful for Rochester and there were there obviously proponents of it in Toronto as well who felt would be good for us and. It was an interesting concept. But anyway, so I said to her you know Hillary please, this is not right. And she sort of seemed to take what I said was right and I explained to her about how all them had come from Florida where they'd been studying aviation, under the American authorities themselves. And yet, she then repeated it and I think even Janet, the Homeland Security secretary at one repeated the same statement. These are like these urban myths, once people say these things, then somebody else repeats it. It's like the dangers of the tweeting world.

AMT: Well you ended up on the no fly list, as minister of defense.

BILL GRAHAM: Well, yes.

AMT: How did that happen?

BILL GRAHAM: Well there was a Bill Graham on the American no fly list, I guess. And I went to the Air Canada desk one day here in Toronto to fly up to Ottawa for a cabinet meeting. And they said oh, Mr. Graham, I'm sorry you're going to have to wait here and they started to laugh. They said the Mounties have to come in before we can give you a boarding pass. I said the Mounties, what have they got to do with it? Well, we're obliged to because you're on a no fly list. I said I'm the Defense Minister of this country going to a Cabinet meeting in my own country, but what are we talking about? The Mounties came over and they said well this is rather embarrassing and ridiculous but your name is there, so you're on the list. So after that I never traveled as Bill Graham again. I always travel as Honorable William Graham, so they could never figure it out.

AMT: That is very telling though for those people trying to get off, that even you couldn't just get off easily.

BILL GRAHAM: No, I sent a letter. The American`s sent me a sort of form letter saying well if you ever have a trouble again come and see us et cetera. But, it is--I understand Ted Kennedy once was stopped at an airport because there was a Kennedy sort of thing. It's very--we have to manage these types of things ourselves for ourselves and we have to provide the necessary security. But we can't just download an American system into Canada and think that it's going to work, it won't.

AMT: One of the biggest scandals that dogged the conservative Harper government was the transfer of suspected Afghan Taliban fighters from Canadian military custody to the Afghan security forces.

BILL GRAHAM: Right.

AMT: You were the one who actually gave the go ahead for those transfers. What was the rational for that?

BILL GRAHAM: Well, I wasn't--I was the Defense Minister you’ll recall, we lost the election at the beginning of 2006 and the military mission really wasn't operational until March or April of that year. So, I was at that point the leader of the opposition. But I certainly followed that detainee issue very closely because again going back to international law, Anna Maria, I mean we are there. We were in Afghanistan to help rebuild Afghanistan. The military mission wasn't there to conquer the country. We needed to have a rule of law. It was very important and where there’s humanitarian law rules it’s important that our forces follow them. But on the practical side, we can't travel with a prison either. So we had 2,500 troops there, they couldn't operate a prison that would have put 400 people. So they had to either transfer the prisoners to someone, either to the United States, which was--we decided it was because of Guantanamo Bay and some of the other issues, was not an acceptable because I actually was in President Bush's office when he gave to us the pictures from Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

AMT: The actual transfer agreement was under your watch.

BILL GRAHAM: Yes that's true.

AMT: And Rick Hillier signed it?

BILL GRAHAM: Yes that's true.

AMT: Why him, not you?

BILL GRAHAM: Well because he was in Afghanistan at the time and it was presented to him. I think the Ambassador should have signed it rather than General Hillier.

AMT: And not the Minister.

BILL GRAHAM: Well it wasn't an international treaty of any kind. It was really an operational agreement. It was signed by the Minister of Defense in Afghanistan as I recall, Wardak. It wasn't signed by the president on their side. And Wardak knew Rick Hillier well, so he said you're here. We had been pressing for this because we knew we were going to have our troops, we were going to have deploy troops into Afghanistan in the next year. Now it wasn't our government, it was the Harper government that did it. But we knew we had to do it, so we knew we had to have that agreement in place. So that's why it was done under our watch.

AMT: You write in your book that you spoke to leaders of Amnesty International Canada and that they were “emphatic about transferring detainees to Afghan custody”. We did contact Amnesty International Canada for a comment about what they told you at the time. And we've got a clip of Alex Neve, the Secretary General. Listen to what he told us.

SOUNDCLIP

We were certainly never supportive of the idea of transferring prisoners into Afghan custody. We were deeply concerned about the very real likelihood that prisoners would be subjected to torture. We had a lot of questions to ask when this first came up as a possibility. As we got more information and then finally saw the agreement that had been negotiated between the Canadian and Afghan governments, our concerns were so clear and so serious that we ended up launching legal action to end it.

AMT: What do you think of what he says there?

BILL GRAHAM: Well it would be interesting to talk to Alex about it. When I wrote this in the book, I went back to my notes. My chief of staff who was there made a specific note. We had the discussion with Alex and others and said we cannot keep the prisoners, we know that. And so, the only alternatives are the Americans or the Afghans. And my notes are very clear that Amnesty International Alex said under no conditions should we transfer them to the Americans. They've been objecting to that all along and I agreed with their objections. I totally agreed with them. And we believed at the time that we had an agreement with the Afghans, whereby they would be inspected by the Afghan Human Rights Commission headed up by Dr. Sima Samar. And we believed that that would give protection for the prisoners. To be fair, we were wrong in that assumption and in retrospect I regret that the agreement wasn't stronger and I do regret what happened.

AMT: Is there a lesson for NATO there? Does NATO need to think about that?

BILL GRAHAM: Absolutely. Again, I say in the book, if NATO is going to go into these missions, they should say somebody is going to have to be responsible for prisoners. And it has to be done and has to be done properly in respect of international humanitarian law rules or the whole mission becomes threatened. This mission was threatened by the virtue of the fact that it lost credibility in the eyes of the Afghans and in the eyes of Canadians because of this detainee issue. And I do hold myself to some extent responsible for it, but I don't accept what Alex said about that conversation.

AMT: Well I guess after this part of conversation, I have to ask you, do you miss politics?

BILL GRAHAM: Oh, well I don't miss the--I miss the good parts but I don't miss the bad parts. Some days it is difficult, but I will say Anna Maria it's such a privilege to represent Canadians in the House of Commons. And it was for me, one of the greatest privileges of my life to be elected and then subsequently to serve as Foreign Minister and Defense Minister. It really was.

AMT: Bill Graham, Thank you for coming in.

BILL GRAHAM: Thank you.

AMT: Bill Graham is the author of The Call of the World: A Political Memoir, it goes on sale tomorrow. And he joined me in our Toronto studio. Stay with us right after the break hard lessons and terrible grief, a call for help and fire protection after the deaths of nine people in a house fire in a Northern Ontario reserve. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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Pikangikum First Nation fire prompts outrage for lack of resources

Guests: Sheila North Wilson

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

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hockey, there is a demise to it, the lack of success by the Canadian teams.

VOICE 2: I think a lot the emphasis is on pleasing the guy just because, again, I feel like guys are really entitled when it comes to sex.

VOICE 3: You’re less insulted by the idea of being asked to perform oral sex than being asked to get a glass of water.

AMT: Okay. Just some of the week that was and is on The Current. Our Friday host Laura Lynch joins me now to look at what you had to say about it. Hello.

LAURA LYNCH: Hi, Anna Maria. How are you?

AMT: Well, from hockey to sex and—

LAURA LYNCH: Yeah. Let’s range across all of those.

AMT: Yeah, yeah. And you know me. I know nothing about hockey. Well, actually, if I put it that way—Oh, never mind. Let’s start.

LAURA LYNCH: [laughs]

AMT: Let's just get to it. Talking to children about sex has never been easy, but yesterday on The Current, author Peggy Orenstein said it's time to rethink our approach altogether. Peggy Orenstein is a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine. She’s also the author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. And she says we should do more than just warn our children about the dangers of sex, but also educate them about the pleasures.

SOUNDCLIP

When I think about hookup culture I don't want to tell girls the context in which you should and shouldn't be having sex or hooking up or relationships. I want them to know what they're likely to get out of a hookup and what they're likely not to get out of a hookup. I want them to know, you know, in a hookup, you might get an adrenaline rush, you might get a war story. You're probably not going to get great sex and you're probably not going to get practice with intimacy.

AMT: Well, after hearing that, we heard from a mother of a 17-year-old daughter. She lives in Gananoque and she says, “I want so badly for my daughter's first sexual experiences to be about mutual pleasure and respect! My strong, self-confident daughter, who never hesitates to call someone out if they are behaving inappropriately, is quietly accepting the disrespectful expectations placed upon her by young men. Peggy was right when she said it all seems to be about the boy's pleasure. “

LAURA LYNCH: Lyba Spring worked for Toronto Public Health for 30 years and she shared this: “Peggy Orenstein's research is about the American experience. While the basics of the hyper sexualization of girls are similar in Canada, sexual health education is not. For 30 years, I sketched the vulva on grade five blackboards during puberty class and explained that the purpose of the clitoris was for pleasure alone.“ And here are a few comments from Twitter. John James had this to say: “As the parent of a tween daughter, I'm surprised there was not more talk about saying no.” And Lenore Lukasik-Foss tweeted this: “Conversation on ‘intimate justice’ and power dynamics for teen girls is essential to understanding sexual violence.”

AMT: Okay. Moving on.

SOUNDCLIP

[music]

Tracking the story.

[music]

AMT: In 2014, we looked at a federal report that found people were 10 times more likely to die in a fire on a reserve than in a city. In January of that year, two young boys, Solomon and Josiah Ballantyne were killed in a house fire on the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. We spoke with Richard Kent, the commissioner of emergency and protective services for the Prince Albert Grand Council about the response to that fire.

SOUNDCLIP

Obviously, inadequate and the reason for that is the fire truck, they had a problem with the fire truck and in our First Nation communities, in those remote communities, such as [indiscernible], if their fire truck will not be able to respond, there is no fire apparatus. They don’t have a second unit sitting there that they can respond with, such as in larger communities or fire departments with more than one fire apparatus.

AMT: Well, this week, the remote First Nation community of Pikangikum in Northwest Ontario suffered its own tragedy. Nine people, three of them children, were killed in a house fire. Sheila North Wilson is the Grand Chief of Northern Manitoba First Nations. She's in Winnipeg this morning. Hi.

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: Good morning.

AMT: What's your reaction to this fire?

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: It's a reoccurring nightmare that seems to becoming, you know, to reality instead of just being a nightmare. And for my for my first reaction, I think I was like, not again, because this happened in n my very own community, Bunibonibee Cree Nation, just over Christmas. Three people perished and now nine with three beautiful little children perished and all because of inadequate housing and lack of fire services in our communities, just appalling.

AMT: Sheila, talk to me a little bit about the housing. It's the materials, isn’t it? It’s not strong housing.

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: No, certainly not. You know, it's very basic housing. A lot of them are put together with clapboard and even glue and the glue actually ignites very fast. And this is what I learned when I was intensely learning the situation and what happened in our community. And that was one of the things that that was pointed out to me over and over again that all these old homes, especially the older ones, are still full of glue and full of old clapboard houses that are, basically, not fire retardant in any way. And one of the biggest and quickest solutions that was identified at the time is to replace all that wood paneling and all that glue with drywall. At least it would slow down a fire from occurring. You wouldn't prevent a lot of the tragedies, I don't think, but it could. It would slow down the fire a little bit.

AMT: And these houses are overcrowded as well, are they not?

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: Absolutely. We hear of three generations in this one house. And this is not an uncommon thing. We have this throughout our north in Manitoba, Ontario, in other northern communities. There's just simply not enough houses for everyone to have their own and to spread out. And that, of course, speaks to you know the lack of privacy and the lack of safety. We saw the outcomes in Kashechewan with all the outbreaks of skin lesions there. And that's also because of overcrowding. It's not on purpose that we're trying to overcrowd the very few houses that we have in communities. People want to have their own spaces, but is just simply not available and the resources are not being provided for that.

AMT: What about firefighting services in northern communities?

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: You know, a lot of the men and women that do fall into your firefighting services are very dedicated and very strong in what they do, but they need support, they need equipment, they need consistent equipment, they need even consistent way to keep them on board, because if a full time job comes along, then the volunteer firefighters who've been trained move on to have a paying job. And so it's not consistent. I think it's more than high time to start investing in the trucks. We’re hearing in Pikangikum that the truck got stuck in the mud. This is horrible. How can we, anyone in this country live with the fact knowing that there are many, many houses and homes and families in our north that are potentially in danger because of the lack of fire services and the lack of proper homes in our north. It's just atrocious.

AMT: Well, you know, in the little clip we played in the introduction, we were highlighting in 2014 that First Nations people are ten times more likely to die in a house fire. Why haven't we seen more action?

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: It's just a lack of will, I think. I know that in our communities there are always people willing to step up and help and do what they can. For instance, in our own territory there is a proposal to the government by one of our tribal councils to create a northern First Nations Fire and Safety Commission to overlook the communities in our north, to study what needs to be put in place, who needs to be put in place, like, an overall body that can monitor the situation and address the needs and the problems that arise. That's just one of the ideas that I think we have to look at an overall strategy to prevent these kind of things from happening, at the very least, while we're waiting to build stock in our housing. We have to make sure these homes are at least adequate. It's too bad that we have to get reminders every once in a while of these kind of things with people's lives and names that are the real victims in the situation.

AMT: Sheila North Wilson, thank you for your time today.

SHEILA NORTH WILSON: Thank you.

AMT: Sheila North Wilson, Grand Chief of the Northern Manitoba First Nations. We reached her in Winnipeg.

[music]

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Mexican states ban narcocorrido music to avoid real drug trade issues, says musician

Guests: Elijah Wald

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and with me today is our Friday host Laura Lynch going through your emails and tweets about some of the stories we've been covering.

LAURA LYNCH: And now it's time to move on to Hockey Night In Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd cheering]

GAME ANNOUNCER: And now the 24^th Stanley Cup banner will hang from the rafters of the famous Forum in Montreal! The Canadiens win the Stanley Cup.

[crowd cheering gets louder]

LAURA LYNCH: It has been a long time since a Canadian hockey team celebrated a Stanley Cup. You don’t have to tell me, being a Vancouver Canucks fan. And this year it looks as if we'll have to keep waiting. Canada's hockey teams have been shut out of the NHL playoffs entirely for the first time in 46 years. Yesterday on The Current, we asked what this means for hockey in Canada and the hearts of our long-suffering NHL fans.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hockey has kind of priced itself out of the market. There'll never be another Wayne Gretzky or Gordie Howe, guys who grew up in blue collar families to become the best in the world in that sport.

VOICE 2: A lot of young people are still gravitating towards hockey, even though it has priced itself out of the market to some extent.

VOICE 3: the other part is it also depends where you are in Canada. If you're in a market like Vancouver or Toronto where you have lots of options, you can explore those options.

AMT: Okay. After that we heard from Derek Pulliam of Calgary who sent us this email: “Your guests' views of hockey are clearly Toronto-centric. When is the last time they went to an outdoor arena? Hockey is vital to young people who show up when it's minus 20. Parents still build backyard rinks, volunteer to coach, and play the sport. “By the way, Bruce Dowbiggin lives in Calgary.

LAURA LYNCH: Right. That’s true. On Facebook, Olivia Edwards had this comment: “When I grew up in a small town in BC in the seventies, my friend even had a backyard ice rink his dad made every year. I didn't play hockey though. I played soccer or field hockey. Now, as a mom, I chose soccer for my son to play as he can play it anywhere and at any time. He didn't and doesn't need much equipment and the practice times are reasonable.” And Gisele Lamarche had another comment via Facebook: “Hockey is only available to the rich. It is not accessible to play or watch for most working poor Canadians. In small towns the hockey clique excludes all others. I used to be a fan, but no more.” And W Bradley Gooderham on Twitter had this to say: “All-male panel discussing all-male pro sports implying all-male fans and participation. Too bad.”

AMT: Okay. Well, moving on.

[Music: song with Spanish lyrics]

AMT: Well, that catchy piece of music is a Mexican band Enigma Norteño singing about the notorious drug lord El Chapo Guzman, a story we have been tracking on The Current. In February, a deadly fight broke out at an Enigma Norteño concert in the town of Elota, Sinaloa. It escalated into a gun fight that left five people dead. The governor of that state has now suspended all public concerts featuring that type of music that is called narcocorrido. A narcocorrido is a song that brings together the tradition of Mexican folk songs and lyrics about drug lords. And there are now three states in Mexico that have banned them from being played at outdoor venues. To explain what this means to the musicians and the drug trade in Mexico, I'm joined by Elijah Wald, a musician, historian and the author of Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. Elijah Wald is in Boston. Hi.

ELIJAH WALD: Hi. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Well, what do you think of a ban on narocorridos in three Mexican states?

ELIJAH WALD: You know, there's nothing new about this. They've been bending corridos off and on forever and, in fact, in Sinaloa, which is where you're talking about, as far as I'm aware, they haven't allowed them to be played on the radio since the 1970s.

AMT: Okay. What makes a narcocorrido song?

ELIJAH WALD: Basically, these are outlawed ballads, just like the ballads we have in the USA - they probably have them in Canada – about Jesse James in the US, so I don't know who your heroic outlaws are. But what happened is, in the seventies, people started updating them to talk about the drug smugglers. Because, you know, a lot of people in Mexico feel like there shouldn't be that border where it is. They feel like a third of the United States was stolen from Mexico. So people who cross that border and ignore those rules were sort of viewed as heroes.

AMT: But then somehow this has morphed into every drug lord has somebody singing them an ode.

ELIJAH WALD: Yes. That's absolutely happened. The thing is, the old corrido tradition, typically, if somebody died, particularly, in a heroic manner, you would hope that somebody would or even hire somebody to write a ballad about them. And what happened is after a lot of ballads were written about the deaths of heroic guys fighting it out with the police or with other gangs a guy named Chalino Sánchez, in the 1980s, figured out that you could just write songs for people without them dying. And it really has turned into a business. I mean, there are lots and lots of groups and lots and lots of writers who do write songs to order for people, not just major drug lords. I mean, anyone who wants a song about them.

AMT: What's in it for the bands? Why do they want to do this?

ELIJAH WALD: Well, first of all, some of them simply get hired to do it. Some of them--You know, there's a lot of work playing private parties for people with wealth, which in that part of Mexico means drug lords. And also they're really popular songs. I mean, it's like gangster movies. It's like crime news on television or crime news in the newspapers. It sells. And, particularly for teenage boys, there's a huge audience who's been buying this stuff. Gangster Rap- it's the same appeal.

AMT: But if you're writing it for El Chapo and he doesn't like the tune what happens?

ELIJAH WALD: You know, it's not so much as he doesn't like the tune as if you're writing it for El Chapo and you happen to show up in a region where rival gangs are there. They might try to send a message to El Chapo by hurting you. There are stories sort of about that maybe happening, but, honestly, my experience, the stories about musicians being threatened tend to be more about publicity. There have been a few musicians killed, but, I mean, the level of the killing in Mexico, I have to say, in the last ten years, fifteen years has been astronomical. And the five musicians who were killed that the Enigma Norteño concert, the news reports did note that in the previous ten days, 16 other people had been shot within that state due to drug violence - the killing of, I think, nine people one place and another before that one. This is, unfortunately, very common right now.

AMT: So what motivates the politicians to want to ban the artists?

ELIJAH WALD: Well, that's sort of a funny story because Mario Lopez Valdez, the governor of Sinaloa, part of his problem is that two years ago a tape surfaced suggesting that he actually was in the pay of Chapo Guzman. So, one of the problems is the violence has escalated. Everyone wants the government to do something about it. There's nothing the government could do, because the drug lords are at least as powerful as the government. So the temptation is to do with these silly symbolic actions and that's really what this is. I mean, you can't stop the drugs. You can't stop the violence. But you can at least get in the newspaper saying we're not going to allow these songs to happen.

AMT: Okay. But, to be clear, the musicians are not part of the drug trade. They are musicians just writing these odes, for the most part.

ELIJAH WALD: What I would say is the musicians are as likely or not to be part of the drug trade as anyone else in the area. Some of them are involved, some of them are not. Certainly, some of them are playing parties for the drug trade, but that's not just narcocorrido musicians. I mean, like the scene in The Godfather with the Italian wedding singer. I mean, romantic singers play at parties for the drug lords, comical singers play at parties for the drug lords, and narco guys do.

AMT: Okay. Well, Elijah Wald, thanks for your perspective on all of this.

ELIJAH WALD: Thank you very much for having me.

AMT: Elijah Wald, musician, historian, and the author of The Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. He joined us from Boston.

[Music]

LAURA LYNCH: To add to anything we do here on The Current, you can tweet us @thecurrentCBC. And if you want to join the conversation about our season-long project Ripple Effect, make sure to use the hash tag #Ripple @rippleCBC. You can find all of our Ripple Effect stories by going to our web site and clicking on Features and that is all at cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can comment on Facebook or email us from our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, and while you're there subscribe to our podcast or check out the links and pictures and information about what we've been up to. It's all at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

AMT: And it is now time to give credit where credit is due. The week that was and is on The Current was produced by Idella Sturino, Shannon Higgins, John Chipman, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Catherine Kalbfleisch, Julian Uzielli, Pacinthe Mattar, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Marc Apollonio, Kinsey Clarke, Karin Marley, and Vanessa Greco.

LAURA LYNCH: Special thanks to Mary Lynk in Halifax, Susan Mckenzie in Montreal, and Suzanne Dufresne in Winnipeg, and to Dean Ples for Technical assistance. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our technicians are Carole Ito, Gary Francis, Jennifer Rowley. Our senior documentary editor is Joan Webber. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard here in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. And the executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

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Farewell tribute to The Current's Carole Ito

AMT: Well, today we have a special last word. We're giving it to one of the great unsung heroes of CBC Radio, our colleague Carole Ito, who's looking at me in a funny way now through the glass on the other side. Carole Ito is the woman who has been at the controls of CBC Radio's flagship shows over the past 36 years. You name the host, Peter Gzowski, Michael Enright, Shelagh Rogers, Avril Benoit -every host of every show in this timeslot owes its voice to Carole Ito. She has been here for all 14 seasons of The Current. And as I go live in this studio you don't want to know what can go wrong and what does go wrong on the other side of the glass - we lose guests, we lose the Skype connection, we get a bad phone line where the guest is barely understandable - Carole Ito fixes it all. She is the calmest, the most, unflappable person in the building. She is a kind and generous colleague. She's also a wicked Pilates teacher. And this is her last day at the controls and we want to wish her well in her new adventures. And we're going to leave you with our tribute to her. And if you listen in closely to the choir in the background, you might even hear Carole belting out one of her favourite songs. Carole, we love you and we will miss you. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

VOICE 1: Hello. Hello. Test. Test. Are you okay? Everything’s rolling?

VOICE 2: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

[Music: Choir! Choir! Choir! singing Take It Easy by The Eagles]

VOICE 3: Carole Ito represents the calm at the eye of the storm.

VOICE 4: To me Carole Ito represents grace under pressure.

VOICE 5: She’s wise. She’s kind of a force of nature.

[Music: Choir! Choir! Choir! singing Take It Easy by The Eagles]

VOICE 6: To me, Carole Ito represents strength, partly because she's super buff and a total smoke show, also because she's represents resilience to me.

VOICE 7: She is a solid, reliable person with a very big genuine heart and loves unconditionally.

[Music: Choir! Choir! Choir! singing Take It Easy by The Eagles]

VOICE 8: Carole represents to me a quiet strength. I’ve always been so jealous of the way Carole Ito can lift things. [laughs] And I find her strength of character to be a really big inspiration.

[Music]

VOICE 9: A good adjective for Carole is steady.

VOICE 10: She represents the calm kindness of the person you kind of want to have watching your back when you feel all tensed up about an interview and somebody who, you know, if you ask a question, you're going to get the smart answer.

VOICE 11: She represents the calm in the control room and also the best dressed person in the control room every morning.

VOICE 12: Carole represents a quiet but powerful grace. She represents style. And she represents a totally no BS approach to living life.

VOICE 13: I’ve worked with Carole Ito in the last three years of the 20th century on a program called This Morning and to me she represents everything that is professional among our sound engineers at CBC.

VOICE 14: To me, Carole Ito represents, actually, the very best of CBC Radio- the commitment to excellence, her constant desire for perfection, and she represents somebody who gets up really early in the morning and has for a very long time, and I don't understand that part of her, but other than that she's pretty well perfect.

VOICE 15: I first met Carole when she was a technician at Morningside. I would sit in the control room warm up bench before heading in to read listener mail with Peter Gzowski. I loved being in the control room. Gary Katz directed the show but everything depended on Carole. Gary compared directing the program to flying a plane, but the one at the controls was Carole Ito. To me, Carole represents something so rare - the combination of empathy, lightheartedness – oh, that laugh – grace, and soul in one, let's face it, beautiful person.

VOICE 16: I'm sure some of you listening I've been lucky enough to meet someone you have reached full workplace complicity with. She has your back. Her work is technically flawless. And to me, Carole Ito represents that colleague.

VOICE 17: There's nothing like looking over in the middle of a pre-tape or a really tough chase to see the face of somebody who is one hundred percent poised and completely reassuring.

VOICE 18: She's all that and then takes your work to another level. I'm guessing it's a similar feeling to making music together in an elite orchestra, except it's radio. And on a personal level, she's a powerful force for good.

VOICE 19: She is a rock and she will be missed very much.

VOICE 20: And I’m thankful that she’s my friend because she’s the best friend anyone can ask for.

[Music: Choir! Choir! Choir! singing Take It Easy by The Eagles]

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Mar. 31, 2016 Episode Transcript

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