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The Current Transcript for April 6, 2015

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Now I’m starting to feel about strange about these questions, because it’s like you are accusing me of something. You are indicating that I have not paid taxes.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: When Iceland's Prime Minister walked away mid-interview, riled by questions from a TV journalist about a tax haven,

he had no idea that an angry protesting public would force him to keep walking: right out of office. Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson swept to power on a promise to protect Iceland from what he called vulture foreign creditors, and a pledge to keep Iceland's assets in the country. But the leak of his link to offshore finances in the Panama Papers suggests he was privately embracing the very thing he publicly denounced. We take the pulse of Iceland's fury in a moment. Also today, more politics of protest.

SOUNDCLIP

We are undertaking a review of the SIU. We are reviewing all the police oversight bodies. We need your help in doing that. You are on the front line. You understand these issues. We need your help in those reviews.

AMT: Ontario's Kathleen Wynne on the legislature steps this week as the protestors of Black Lives Matter Toronto demanded accountability and transparency from the Special Investigations Unit that looks into incidents of death and injury at the hands of police. The protestors, the union, and the man who investigated the investigation unit, in half an hour. And then, Alex Salmond on the hard truths of the fight of his political life.

SOUNDCLIP

I was brought up to believe there were three great lies in life. One was, darling, I'll respect you in the morning. The second was, the cheque's in the post. And the third is - I am from the London treasury and I really want to help Scotland.

AMT: He stepped aside as leader of the Scottish National Party when they lost a referendum on Scottish Independence, but ain't over. In an hour, Alex Salmond muses on politics, rival politicians, and wait until you hear him spew on his one-time ally, Donald Trump. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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Panama Papers pummel Iceland's PM after revelations of offshore funds

Guests: Paul Fontaine, Stefania Oskarsdottir

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Protesters blowing whistles, clanging]

AMT: Well, Iceland is reeling from the explosive revelations of the so-called Panama Papers. Thousands of protesters convened outside parliament in Reykjavik this week and again last night, demanding the resignation of the prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, after the biggest data leak in history revealed his failure to disclose an offshore account created through the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Protesters blowing whistles, clanging]

VOICE 1: Of course we knew something was happening, but the extent of the situation was a total surprise. So that's why I am here.

VOICE 2: I am just protesting the corruption of the government. The Prime Minister has been hiding his money in Tortola and lying about it.

VOICE 3: Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson and his wife are cited in the so called Panama Papers as hiding millions of dollars of investments in Icelandic banks, but the Prime Minister said he would not quit.

SIGMUNDUR GUNNLAUGSSON: I certainly won't because my wife has always paid her taxes. I have been willing to put the interests of Iceland first even when it's a disadvantage to my own family.

[Sound: Protesters]

AMT: Well, after his initial refusal to resign, Mr. Gunnlaugsson said yesterday he was “stepping aside,” handing over the Office of the Prime Minister for an unspecified time. Paul Fontaine has been covering the protests. He's the news editor of Reykjavik Grapevine, which is an English-language magazine in Iceland, and he joins us from the capital. Hello!

PAUL FONTAINE: Hello.

AMT: There's been so much anger, what have you been seeing on the streets in these protests?

PAUL FONTAINE: Yes, a great deal of anger. And in some cases, a great deal of disbelief. Especially in light of this press release that was sent to international media last night. As you had said, you know, this saying that he's just going to step aside for an unspecified amount of time, and this other guy's going to take the reins. People are very confused, very angry, and one historian here has pointed out that there is no precedent for the type of thing that the Progressive Party is proposing; you're either the prime minister or you're not. You don't just step aside for a little while and then come back in.

AMT: Okay, and before we get to the nitty gritty of whether he's still trying to cling to power for something, tell me a little bit more about who's in the streets, because they're throwing things, too, aren't they? Like, what's happening there?

PAUL FONTAINE: Yes. Well Monday saw about 23,000 protesters in front of parliament. And just to give you a sense of scale, there is about 320,000 people in Iceland as a whole. So this would be the equivalent of about 2.3 million people converging on the U.S. Congress. Monday, there were more people turned out than the police were able to handle, really, and at the front lines of these protests there were people throwing bananas, which has become a popular symbol in this country for corruption as a reference to a banana republic. Skyr, you know, the famed yogurt that we make; toilet paper, all kinds of projectiles being thrown at the windows of parliament-- eggs. To the point where I've been told that people inside parliament had difficulty seeing out the windows, for all the debris being hurled at them right now.

AMT: Wow. And clearly, they're upset, but who's out there? Who's actually protesting?

PAUL FONTAINE: Well, it's a wide cross-section of people. I mean, there's a broad base of support for his resignation. This is a sort of thing that has gone beyond party lines by this point. When 80 per cent of respondents to a Gallup poll say that they want the prime minister to resign, that's significant, because that goes way into his own support base. We're talking about people who live here in the city, we're talking to people out in the countryside, there's been sympathy protests all the way up in Akureyri, in the north end of the country, in the east. Basically, the Icelandic nation wants him gone. It's a huge cross-section of people. But I don't imagine many of them have offshore tax shelters.

AMT: And now, they were out again last night, were they not?

PAUL FONTAINE: They were. They were, and in slightly lower numbers than they were on Monday night, mostly because in talking to people on the street, it seems that things are very unclear. Because he had made the statement that he was resigning, you know, like, we were expecting this other person was going to take over. So maybe for a portion of Icelanders, that was satisfactory, but now that we're finding out that he's actually just taking a pause, there's going to be another round of protests at 5:00 today Icelandic time, and I don't think this is going to end anytime soon.

AMT: Okay, so let’s talk a little bit more. So at first, he tried to, he wanted parliament dissolved because he wanted a new election.

PAUL FONTAINE: That’s correct.

AMT: And the president said, no way.

PAUL FONTAINE: That is correct.

AMT: And so we don't really know that he's actually stepped away, like he says he stepped away, but--

[loud winds]

AMT: Oh.

PAUL FONTAINE: [muffled] I’m sorry?

AMT: Hold on, as of a little bit of…[chuckles] over the ocean noise, there, Okay. So what does it mean, like, who's taking his place, at least for the short term?

PAUL FONTAINE: That would be Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson. Who is a really bizarre choice considering when this Panama Papers story unfolded, Sigurdur Ingi was not only very diligent about defending the Prime Minister, he had also defended offshore accounts themselves by saying it's complicated to keep money in Iceland. The last Gallup poll from last March showed that he has the trust of about three per cent of the nation. So that has caused a lot of anger and confusion, as you might imagine. Like, possibly the least popular choice from that party was put in the prime minister’s seat.

AMT: And so, would that mean that the party-- it's a coalition government, right? So is that part of the protests, too, they don't want him there, either? What do the protesters want?

PAUL FONTAINE: They want him gone, and the vast majority that I've spoken to, and have seen on the streets, anyway, want the dissolution of parliament, they want early elections. It’s what the opposition parties have been pushing for, and even Bjarni Benediktsson, the chairperson of the Independence Party, the Progressive’s coalition partners, even he has said that he is going to talk to the Progressives about the possibility of early elections being on the table. So I don't think that this musical chairs that the Progressive Party is trying to play is going to sit well; or last very long, for that matter.

AMT: And is Mr. Gunnlaugsson the only one to be named from Iceland in these papers, along with his wife?

PAUL FONTAINE: No, he's not. Bjarni Benediktsson was also named; Minister of the Interior, Ólöf Nordal was named. Three Reykjavik City Council people, past and present, were also named. And our reporters told us that there are hundreds of other Icelanders who are implicated in these papers, and that we've just seen the tip of the iceberg, which I think is the real story here.

AMT: And to be clear, no one is saying that the former Prime Minister or the stepped aside Prime Minister has done anything illegal. This is more about, they see him as being hypocritical?

PAUL FONTAINE: He’s definitely hypocritical, and what he did is possibly illegal, because it really is a matter of the interpretation of the law regarding registering your vested interests when you go into parliament, as every member of parliament is required to do. He failed to say anything at all about Wintris, and the legality of that is up for debate, really. But yes, as you say, like, the hypocrisy is what's really lit a fire under people.

AMT: Okay, and you make the point that there are many other names, but as you also pointed out, this is a country of 320,000 people. So how many people would be named in these papers?

PAUL FONTAINE: Well, we don't know the exact number. When this story broke on Sunday evening, we were told hundreds of Icelanders were implicated and that these include powerful people, these can include other politicians. They were named specifically, but we are going to be seeing more reporting on this matter in the coming weeks. It's a two-terabyte data leak. It's huge, there's a lot to comb through. But I expect that there's going to be more news developing over the weeks, and possibly months to come.

AMT: Okay, Paul Fontaine, thanks for bringing us up to speed.

PAUL FONTAINE: Thank you.

AMT: Paul Fontaine, news editor of Reykjavik Grapevine. And he joined us from Reykjavik, Iceland. Well, the fallout from the Panama Papers controversy does have the country grappling with an uncertain political future. According to our next guest, the roots of this lie in the trauma of the recent past. Stefania Oskarsdottir is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland. She’s in Reykjavik. Hello.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Hello, how are you doing?

AMT: I'm well, and I'm interested to hear what you've got to tell us. First of all, why are we seeing this level of anger, what's behind it?

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Well, the events of 2008, when three Icelandic private banks collapsed at the height of the financial crisis, international credit crash crisis, many people in Iceland felt that their whole livelihoods were threatened. There were also very, very angry at the politicians who had, in the previous years, taken credit for the incredible boom in Iceland at the time. Then came this financial collapse, and politicians suddenly sort of put the blame on the private sector, so to speak. And people felt that the whole political establishment had, in some ways, been accomplices to the build-up of Iceland as an international financial sector, so to speak. And the economic fallout was great, and the political fallout was even greater.

AMT: Now, Mr. Gunnlaugsson says that this was his wife's money, she inherited, this is her inheritance; that this has nothing to do with anything improper. Talk to us a little bit more about what he's saying.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Well, that's true. Everyone here in Iceland is familiar, or most people who follow the news are familiar with the fact that his wife inherited money, stemmed from the fact that her parents owned a very successful Toyota car dealership here in Iceland. The dealership was sold in 2005 or 2006, and they got the inheritance paid out in advance. And what they did was that they put this money into an offshore account, a company based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. At the time, they were not married. And maybe at the time when the company was created, the Prime Minister is explaining, there was no money in the company. But as soon as money was transferred into the company, he says that his name was removed as the owner of the company. This, to some people, sounds fishy. Also his claim that all taxes were paid in Iceland in full. And it's true that his wife is paying one of the highest taxes in Iceland, so that's true. But still, people are, you know, they don't have full evidence of this, and some people wonder if this is really true, or just some amount, just some taxes were paid, not all in full.

AMT: Right.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: The big, there’s a difficult issue for the Prime Minister to explain, and that is the fact that among the assets of this company owned by his wife, were claims in the estates of the collapsed banks, and the government, the Icelandic Authority, has over the last two years, been engaged in very tough and complicated negotiations over the settlements of these estates, and how basically involving how and to what extent the claimants are able to take money out of Iceland.

AMT: So in other words, he's being seen in a conflict of interest, because she's been overseeing in the government these claims in the estates of collapsed banks. Also Icelanders since the collapse have real restrictions on what they can do, in terms of foreign trade, do they not?

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Yes. Because one of the most serious things that happened here in 2008 was that the currency fell by 50 per cent. This meant that people, living costs rose dramatically, inflation rose, etcetera. So in order to stop the hemorrhaging of the Icelandic economy, capital controls were put in place in November of 2008. And from that time on, Icelanders, normal Icelanders, have not been able to take their money and put it into a foreign accounts, or, you know, buy assets abroad, except to get special permission from the government.

AMT: So in other words, they cannot do the very thing that his name is linked to.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Yeah, but those laws, the capital controls that were put in place in 2008, did not apply to money that was already outside of outside the country. So no Icelanders were required to sell all their foreign assets and bring it to Iceland. They were still allowed to keep assets abroad. But from 2008, they could not. And these capital controls were supposed to be temporary; they’re still in place, but hopefully this year, they will start to lift. And so this is what the government has been working on for the past few years. They reached a settlement the end of last year with the claimants of the estates of the fallen banks, which make it possible to start lifting the capital controls. And the Prime Minister has been taking credit for all these accomplishments, and now he's saying when this all came out, that people should take him at his word, that he has been working heroically, in his words, to preserve the interest..

AMT: [interposing] Okay, so let me--

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: ..Out of Iceland.

AMT: Let me pick up-- Stefania, we don’t have a lot of time. I want to keep talking about this, but let's move forward, please. So politically, who stands to gain the most from this upheaval?

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Well I guess, very, very few are gaining anything, except for the Pirate Party, which is a new alternative party that was elected into parliament in 2013. At the time, it got 4.9 per cent of the vote. Now, they have been polling for the last month in and around 35 per cent of the vote. And this morning, there was a new poll that came out that showed that they had more than 40 per cent support. But I think very few people here in Iceland expect, however, that come elections that the Pirate Party would receive such a huge share of the vote. But the former coalition parties that were in power between 2009 and 2013, they have a very weak position in the polls, and they have not gained much from this upheaval. And it seems to me that what will happen, what already has happened, is that the coalition will continue. They might announce early elections. There will be election at the latest in April of next year, but maybe we'll see elections in the fall.

AMT: [interposing] I want to pick up, if I may, I'd like to pick up on that. I mean clearly, the former Prime Minister wanted to dissolve parliament and ask for elections. Does he seem to think that he could be re-elected despite what's gone on in the streets?

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Sure. He thinks he can take the case to the voters, to his voters, and show them the accomplishments that have been achieved in Iceland. The economy is in high gear, high economic growth, low unemployment, low inflation, increase in real wages, capital controls will be lifted soon, and stuff like that. And he’ll say that in the big picture, that his sort of misdemeanors or whatever he chooses to call it, are miniscule in comparison to his accomplishments. And he himself is convinced, that the world’s convinced, that he could take his case to the voters. He, however, he was put in his place by his own party, parliamentary party yesterday, when they basically told him to step aside. And that's what happened. He maybe was in a very excited state of mind yesterday and not fully coherent, I guess. So we had some strange happenings yesterday afternoon. But the basic thing is that he has stepped aside.

AMT: And…

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: He has stepped aside. There’s nobody who thinks that he's coming back anytime soon. Maybe after next election, who knows what will happen then, but right now, he has resigned. Although formally, he has not gone to the president, to ask for the president to replace him with someone else.

AMT: Well, no, and I guess as our last guest pointed out, there are more names that are on the list. So things could get even more chaotic in the streets and politically, I guess, eh?

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Yeah, but I should correct the previous speaker in pointing out that last, the protests that were had in front parliament. There were only some 500-1,000 people who showed up, and that’s a huge difference from Monday night. But there’s still a lot of people who will be protesting in the streets tonight, and of course, it’s put the pressure on the coalition and particularly, the Independence Party.

AMT: Right, okay.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: [indistinct]..and call for early elections.

AMT: Stefania, we have to leave it there. Thank you for your perspective on all of this.

STEFANIA OSKARSDOTTIR: Yeah, you are most welcome.

AMT: Stefania Oskarsdottir, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland. She joined us from Reykjavik. Let us know what you think as you watch this issue of the Panama Papers unfold, and especially in Iceland, where it seems to be hitting the hardest right now. You can tweet us, we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook, go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. This is The Current.

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Black Lives Matter TO protest demands SIU overhaul, Premier vows review

Guests: Sandy Hudson, Andre Marin, Mike McCormack

SOUNDCLIP

[protesters yelling, chanting and banging]

No justice, no peace, no racist police, no justice, no peace no racist police, we are not going to move. You are killing us every single day. We are not moving. We are staying. This is about defending our lives. This is a peaceful protest to defend our lives. You are killing us every single day. Indict convict, send that killer cop to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, for two weeks Toronto's Black Lives Matter protesters camped outside police headquarters in downtown Toronto. The demonstration began after Ontario's Special Investigations Unit, the SIU, cleared police of wrongdoing in the shooting death of Andrew Loku. The South Sudanese man was holding a hammer when he was killed last July in the hallway outside his apartment. He was killed by an unnamed police officer. Protesters’ demands included a review of the SIU, and last Friday Toronto City Council voted unanimously in favour of a motion calling for the province to review the police and the SIU through an anti-racism lens. On Monday, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne walked out of the legislature building to talk to the Black Lives Matter protesters gathered on the grounds.

SOUNDCLIP

KATHLEEN WYNNE: We are undertaking a review of the SIU. We are reviewing all the police oversight bodies. We need your help in doing that. You are on the frontline, you understand these issues. We need your help in those reviews. We're going to need to have some private meetings ahead of time but we are willing to have a public meeting.

AMT: Well, following that exchange, protesters packed up their makeshift camp and gave the province 300 hours, about 12 1/2 days to make good on the Premier's promise. Sandy Hudson is one of the protest organizers and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Toronto and she's with me in our studio. Good morning.

SANDY HUDSON: Good morning.

AMT: What was that moment like for you when Premier Wynne came out to address your group?

SANDY HUDSON: I was both, I was very surprised, I wasn't expecting any politicians to come out and speak to us directly right at that moment. And I was, I was encouraged because so many of the people who joined us and it was thousands of people over the two weeks, who joined us in protest deserved some sort of reaction from decision makers about this very urgent problem, but I'm also a bit nervous because I don't want people who have been paying attention to this issue to think that the promise of a meeting is enough. There are so many more concrete things that need to be done to ensure accountability in the ways that black folks are targeted by police, in ways that other communities simply are not.

AMT: And what are you looking for the Premier to do now?

SANDY HUDSON: So, what I think is very important is that in doing the review, they're looking at this from an anti-black racism lens. Because I think with respect to the new regulations on carding, that was something that was really missed. They weren't looking at it in a way to solve a racism issue. And as a result, what they ended up coming out with was a watered down band-aid solution that really won't solve the issues of anti-black racism and police targeting in Toronto or anywhere else with respect also to Indigenous communities.

AMT: When you say looking through a lens, they're going to re-examine maybe how the thinking has occurred, an investigation has occurred and maybe how they may have made decisions that they weren't aware of being racist?

SANDY HUDSON: Not so specific. We're talking about a more systemic problem so I'm talking about looking at the policy and saying wow, the way that the this policy is enacted really sees police officers targeting particular communities, indigenous and black communities, more than others and it see death from the black community in Toronto far more disproportionately represented than any other community. And so in order to solve those problems we need to start from what the actual issue is, which is systemic racism in policing. If we start from there and try to solve that problem, hopefully we can get to a positive solution. That's going to need the Premier and all the other decision makers who are going to be a part of this to have the community involved.

AMT: The SIU investigated the death of Andrew Loku and no police officers were charged. What is it about the SIU report that troubles you?

SANDY HUDSON: It's not much of a report. It's less than a page. There's not a lot of information in there and so the public which is supposed to be able to keep these services accountable that work for us aren’t able to do anything to double check or to ensure what investigation took place was actually fair.

AMT: So you have no idea how they came to that decision?

SANDY HUDSON: No, and people who live around Andrew Loku in that neighborhood. in that community dispute some of the things that are in the SIU report and so that gives us pause. The public should be able to know whether or not a police officer who is involved in killing another person has a history of negative infractions with the public, and they have a right to know whether or not that police officer still on the streets. The SIU, in 95-plus percent of cases is clearing police officers and it's not that we're not saying that they need to assume that they're guilty. This is about sending it to a court of law for further investigation and 95 percent of cases the SIU is not doing that.

AMT: You mean in terms of charges. You’re saying the SIU is making a decision that perhaps the court should be making.

SANDY HUDSON: Exactly.

AMT: Are you saying it was necessarily wrong or are you saying you don't even know if it was necessarily wrong because you just don't have enough information, enough transparency?

SANDY HUDSON: There's not enough information. There is not enough transparency. For me, talking to people in the community and hearing the facts about the case I think that it was absolutely wrong. I don't understand why in under a minute of entering into Andrew Loku’s home, he was in front of his place, witnesses there he said he was calm, that he was shot because he was holding a hammer. That doesn't make sense to me. And I would like to hear more from an investigation done and in the courts.

AMT: We will be hearing from the Toronto Police Union head Mike McCormack in a few minutes. He maintains that Andrew Loku’s cause of death has nothing to do with race.

SANDY HUDSON:[laughs] You know, I guess what was really frustrating about his comments was to see that he is finally acknowledging that there's an issue with respect to mental health in policing as well, but only in opposition to the idea that there might be a racism problem. There is a racism problem. There are tons of journalists and academic articles that have discussed and proved this. And you know, I've been a black woman for 30 years of my life. I don't know what Mike McCormack's experience with racism is, but I don't think he should, his initial reaction should be to discount what people in the community who know very much about this problem are saying. It would be a much better strategy, in my opinion, to err on the side of caution and see if there might be something that can be done to assuage the issues that the community is bringing out.

AMT: What would it take for you to have more faith in police services in this city and more broadly, in this country?

SANDY HUDSON: It would take the ability for the public to be able to keep these services accountable effectively. More information should be provided to the public and we should be able to speak to our decision makers and services about that. At Black Lives Matter, we tried to contact the SIU several times. Phone calls were not returned. Emails were not returned after saying they were. We got other people who did not identify themselves as Black Lives Matter to try to get information. Those phone calls and e-mails were not returned. We tried to file a Freedom of Information request and they sent us running around from agency to agency to the point where we had to contact a lawyer to try to get this stuff done. It doesn't seem to make sense to me.

AMT: I’ll pick up on that issue of accountability with my next guest. Thank you for coming in.

SANDY HUDSON: No problem, thank you.

AMT: That is Sandy Hudson. She's the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Toronto and she joined me in our Toronto studio. My next guest is well acquainted with the Special Investigations Unit having served both as a watchdog and a leader of the unit. Andre Marin was Ontario's Ombudsman for ten years from 2005 to 2015. He also served as Director of Ontario's SIU before that 1961 to 1998. He now teaches criminal law at the University of Ottawa and Andre Marin joins us from our Ottawa studio. Hello.

ANDRE MARIN: Good morning.

AMT: What do you make of the concerns that Sandy Hudson just raised?

ANDRE MARIN: I think they are legitimate. You know, the bottom line is what Sandy is saying is that they don't have enough information to judge whether the investigation was credible or not. And when the director of the SIU does not lay charges, he or she prepares a report to the Attorney General outlining the reasons why not and what they investigated and so on. On that report, believe it or not, is treated like a state secret. It's sent to the AG in a brown envelope and it is never made public and I have investigated the SIU twice and if your listeners Google Oversight on Scene and Oversight Undermined, they will find our conclusions in our reports. I recommended in 2008, eight years ago that the government make public that report to allow outsiders to scrutinize the report. Imagine if this was your neighbour, your son, your daughter, shot by the police you had questions. Well, it's great for the police unions to say well it is nothing to do with race, it has nothing to do with that, but what does it have to do with? What happened and how did the SIU investigate it? So, when I see the parade of Premier Kathleen Wynne and Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur and the minister responsible for the police, Yasir Naqvi parade out together for a photo op, that caption should have been the underachievers because they never acted on those recommendations and--

AMT: So, they don't even have to do much, they just have to pull up your recommendations and put them in?

ANDRE MARIN: They are all there. They're like, we're going to study it more, we're going to private meetings. It's just talk. They had a report since 2008 and we came back in 2011 and looked at why the government had done nothing to strengthen police oversight, and in it we found a memo within the government saying because of quote “vehement police opposition” unquote, they're not going to do anything. So, who runs the government? The government or the police? So they just run away from it and it's unfortunate because we knew that this was going to be a powder keg ready to explode and today you have the explosion.

AMT: The SIU was launched in 1990 as a response to two fatal shootings of black men in the Toronto area, was it not?

ANDRE MARIN: It was a launched in a moment, in an electoral moment where that was a big issue and the then government of Bob Rae passed legislation, adopted this model, but since then it's been fought tooth and nail by the police and it's never been revisited, so I think what they should do is pull out those sections from the Police Services Act, create its own act, the SIU act and have the SIU run a transparent, open operation that has the teeth to force police to cooperate because the police just play this cat and mouse game knowing that there's no consequence.

AMT: Okay, well, let me pick up on this. Police involved in a shooting do not have to cooperate with the investigation unit that's looking into that shooting?

ANDRE MARIN: They have to cooperate if they're witness officers but there are no consequences if they don't cooperate. There is no consequence for police chiefs either.

AMT: What about their notes?

ANDRE MARIN: Well, they're supposed to but there's no sanction, that's the problem here.

AMT: You can’t subpoena the note?

ANDRE MARIN: No, you can’t. They’re just an investigative body. They request it and they count on police chiefs who often duck behind police unions to not order people to do what they should be doing. So, there's a scene of a shooting you'll have police officers breaching the scene, kicking around the bullets, interfering with the SIU’s work, the SIU will write-- I mean in 2011 we documented over 200 letters written by the SIU to police chiefs complaining about tampering with the scene, interfering with witnesses, and less than ten percent bothered to respond. So, why? Because there's no consequence and it becomes all political, all in the media and this whole issue of keeping everything secret, I mean some police officers believe that it should be secret enforcers operating under a cloak of anonymity. I mean we saw it in the G20, police officers from Toronto all had ripped off their name, their insignia from their uniform so they could not be identified when they were beating peaceful protesters.

AMT: I want to ask you more about the SIU. In looking at 266 complaints received by the SIU last year, the most common were injuries in custody and that made up about 154 complaints. Second highest complaint area was sexual assault allegations, 41 out of 266 complaints. What do you make of that?

ANDRE MARIN: Well, it's surprising. The SIU mandate is triggered not by a complaint but by a fact. So, serious injury or death, police officer involved, SIU mandate is triggered. So, in a case of a sexual assault though, the police would not self-report, someone wouldn’t say I am calling the SIU because I just, you know, sexually assaulted somebody or a witness officer wouldn't rat out his fellow officer because there's the thin blue line. I would think that that means that complainants have to actually call the SIU and say I was sexually assaulted, which is troublesome. And again, we don't know, we can speculate till hell freezes over but we don't know the answers to that. Why is it? What happened in those cases? Where are the director's reports? Again, we’re just left to speculate because the SIU operates in a cloak of secrecy.

AMT: So all of this exists somewhere in the Attorney General files, but we can't get access to it?

ANDRE MARIN: Precisely. And we've recommended for the last eight years that it is fundamental. People have legitimate questions. Black Lives Matter raises a whole bunch of issues. You may agree or disagree with some of them but the basic promise you know, how can we judge whether this was a fair, honest investigation as Sandy said before. We can't. We’re just left to debate it on radio.

AMT: What action would you like to see the province take our Special Investigations Unit?

ANDRE MARIN: We made over the last eight years, recommendations to both the SIU and to the entire government. The SIU had a new director at the time, Ian Scott, who implemented a lot of those recommendations. The Ontario government just gave it the royal shrug and just walked away from the file. So, what I'd like to see is the Ontario government they don't need to study things to death. If they're looking for a consensus by the police, if they are looking for Mike McCormack and others to give their blessing to strengthen police oversight, hell will be freezing over before that happens. It takes leadership, it takes moral fortitude to do the right thing. We've researched it, we looked at different models but the government refused to move. It showed that it had no spine or moral fortitude. The recommendations are there, the findings are there. Just do your work. Just lead the file and make the proper decisions.

AMT: Andre Marin, thank you for speaking with me today.

ANDRE MARIN: My pleasure.

AMT: Andre Marin is the former Ontario Ombudsman. He joins us from Ottawa. We did request an interview with the Ministry of the Attorney General, we did not receive a response. Well, for a police perspective on the Special Investigations Unit, I'm joined by Mike McCormack. He's the President of the Toronto Police Association. We've reached him in Toronto, hello.

MIKE MCCORMACK: How are you?

AMT: Well, I'm curious to know what you think. Andre Marin just basically said that the association has one of the barriers the SIU faces in doing its job.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well, I think that was one of the points of what seemed to be to be a bitter tirade. Not too much factually driven, which I would have expected more from a former director and the Ombudsman and you know, to say that we're obstructionist, that we’re not there, this association since I've been the leader, has always been about let's have transparent, open discussions but we want them evidence based, factually based, and on the rules of law. So, just as a matter of clarification on some of the points, why I'm bringing this up, when I have somebody like Andre Marin say we have secret enforcers for the G20 and that they don't rat each other out, and the thin blue line and police don't cooperate, he know that that's not factually correct. So, I just want to just clarify a couple things. You brought up a good point, injury in custody. So, that's the number one issue the SIU investigates, but anybody who is involved in that process and I would have expected Mr. Marin to be educated on this as well, understands what that captures many times we get a call that somebody so distraught and they are going to commit suicide, and the police officers arrived on scene and they knock on the door and that person ends up jumping off the balcony or whatever, the SIU is triggered. And that's treated as, because there is contact with police, that's investigated as an injury in custody.

AMT: Okay, how did the sexual assault one get in there?

MIKE MCCORMACK: The sexual assault one is that we have the duty, and it's not a pleasant duty, at times to strip search people, to pat people down, so when the sexual assaults in the number you're talking about are not sexual assaults of allegations of police officers going in and sexually assaulting people on the street. Those are in relation to people in custody, people who are being searched, and when people make an allegation, well they touched me inappropriately during a search.

AMT: Okay, well, let me just ask you, though, we would know that you if in fact there was more transparency, would we not?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Again, I think that that's a discussion that needs to be had. I can see some of the points around the transparency in the investigation process. Not in the investigation process, I should say, but what is put out, and what's put out to the public. And I think that that is a valid point and a valid point of discussion. That's something that we should look at. We should look at the rules of law and why the SIU do that and I think that that needs to be fleshed out a lot more. So, I agree with that point but to say in the absence of that discussion that there's a racial overtone or words like we're killing people of colour every day, you know and it's got to do with police oversight, well we're looking for police oversight and from a policing perspective, is we cooperate with the SIU and again, Mr. Marin saying well, witness officers do or don't cooperate. We cooperate fully and in fact, if I have an officer who doesn't cooperate, they are subject to Police Service Act charges. We give them the notes, we give them full cooperation, full access--

AMT: Well, that’s interesting because we know from Mr. Marin’s two investigations that sometimes notes are refused, that in fact the police who are being investigated do not always choose to cooperate and do not always hand over their notes.

MIKE MCCORMACK: First of all, we are bound to cooperate legislatively, and we always cooperate with the investigation. I think what Mr. Marin is sort of putting a fuzzy line in there, is that when subject officers do not necessarily go in for an interview because they have the same rights, they are a subject of a criminal investigation. So, they have the same charter rights and freedoms as any member of the public and that's a right of anybody who's a citizen in Canada, so that's where the line is, but that's because we're respecting the process and the rules of law. But, when he's saying that police don't cooperate, it puts of the sense, oh my god the cops are out there doing all this stuff and they're not cooperating and they're doing—

AMT: Okay, but you know Mr. McCormack, you make the point you have the same rights and freedoms as individuals but you guys walk around with guns and you, at times, you do get to shoot people dead and walk away from it without charges, most civilians do not. You are in a special category, are you not? And so, special rules must apply to investigations of your members must they not?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Exactly and that's why we have the SIU to do the investigation into the facts and the evidence. The fact that a subject officer or anybody who is a suspect within a criminal investigation of Charter rights, doesn't overshadow that we’re police officers. And to say like we get to go out and shoot people, well--

AMT: But the fact is, part of your job is to draw that gun. If there is no transparency on when that gun is drawn, do you not understand that the public has concerns about those officers who are acting in the line of duty versus those officers who have who have been irresponsible?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well, first of all there is very clear transparency in when we draw the gun and we make it very clear that police officers are allowed to use their weapon and may resort to that use of force item when there is an immediate threat or grievous bodily harm or death and then they are investigated fully on that. The fact that often in these cases the officer is justified but don't forget we had two officers charged with substantive charges, second degree murder--

AMT: Yes, you have. So again, why the hesitation in more transparency if in fact you believe that the SIU is doing its job? Why shouldn't the public be allowed to see that?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well, again I didn't say that there shouldn’t be more transparency, I said that this is a discussion we need to have with the SIU and look at that and I can see where some people can draw that nexus that they're not getting as much information and I think that that's a necessary discussion and we need to explore that to alleviate where it is. When there is a lack of information, people will plug in whatever they believe in and that may not be true and I think that that is a valid conversation that needs to be had and we need to explore that. So, I'm not saying that we don't need the transparency, what I'm saying is that that discussion to be based on law and what are we doing, what are we trying to achieve. I think that's a necessary discussion to have.

AMT: What do you think of the fact that City Council has now passed a motion calling for the province to review the police and the SIU through an anti-racism lens and that the province has indicated it wants to work with those concerned about that very issue?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well again, when I look at that and when I look at what that motion is entailing, that's where I sort of have a problem. We in policing think that investigation should be based on the rules of law, that they should be evidence driven, and then the transparency point, as I said we need to have a discussion around, the fact that if somebody has displeasure or they're not satisfied with an SIU finding, does not imply that there is something underhanded or improperly motivating the investigation. Saying that that should be looked at on a subjective test and ad hoc, you know it allows for arbitrary claim so we're saying that, yeah we need the investigations. But to say any time that somebody is unhappy with an outcome, or a special interest group are not only in the investigation because you heard it well, okay they're not happy that police officers are not charged, the fault isn’t that there's all of this racist overtone that applies.

AMT: Okay, we have to leave it there. Mike McCormack, thank you for weighing in on this discussion.

MIKE MCCORMACK: A pleasure.

AMT: Mike McCormack, President of the Toronto Police Association. He joined us from Toronto. What do you think? Let us know. You can tweet us. We are @thecurrentcbc. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/tehcurrent and click on the contact link. If you joined us partway through you can download the podcast or listen right online.

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The dream of Scottish independence lives on for Alex Salmond

Guest: Alex Salmond

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

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd cheering and applauding]

VOICE 1: Absolutely fantastic. It’s a great result … brilliant.

VOICE 2: What happens now?

VOICE 1: Now we get on with improving Scotland the way the people of Scotland have asked that we should.

VOICE 3: Shocked and heart broken. Yeah. Really, really hurt. I just have no words.

AMT: Scottish voices of joy and sorrow from September of 2014. The Scottish referendum for independence from Britain began as a long shot and then turned into a nail biter. But in the end, the people of Scotland voted to stay with the United Kingdom and on that night Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party and the First Minister of Scotland, appeared before the country.

SOUNDCLIP

It has been the privilege of my life to serve as First Minister, but as I said often enough during this referendum campaign, this is a process which is not about me or the SNP or any political party, it's much, much more important than that. The position is this. We lost the referendum vote. But Scotland can still carry the political initiative. Scotland can still emerge as the real winner. For me as leader my time is nearly over, but for Scotland the campaign continues and the dream shall never die.

AMT: And with that, Alex Salmond resigned having led for seven years and almost realizing his dream of an independent Scotland. He has not gone away, however. Lately, he's receiving a lot of attention internationally for taking aim at the US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, but we'll get to that. Today, Alex Salmond is a member of the British House of Commons where he continues to fight for a separate Scotland and as Britain gears up for its own referendum on whether to exit the European Union, Alex Salmond argues the events unfolding could yet lead to Scottish independence. Alex Salmond has also written a memoir. It is called The Dream Shall Never Die. He joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome.

ALEX SALMOND: Thank you very much, great to be here in Toronto.

AMT: It was a hard night for you and those who wanted an independent Scotland. What was going through your mind as independence slipped away that night?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, I’ve had days, Anna Maria. [laughs] It was obviously a huge disappointment for me, obviously, as leader of the Yes campaign, but for many, many people across the country. And what was important in the day after the vote was to focus people on what could be achieved and to give people the inspiration that the story wasn't over, that the campaign would continue. And it's continued under new leadership and is, of course, as we know, being extremely successful in winning 56 out of 59 in Scotland last year in the UK general election of which I was one. I suppose what made it difficult for people is that we started this as long outsiders and came very, very close and probably got to the front in the last week of the campaign from, you know, coming from way back. And therefore that made all the more disappointing for people, but, you know, the pages have turned, the world has spinned on and things still look good for Scottish constitutional development for Scotland and for Scottish independence.

AMT: What was it like for you, though, the day Scotland finally got to vote for independence?

ALEX SALMOND: I actually remember well. I woke up like a campaign day, like an election day here, for example. You do the normal things. You go around the polling stations. You speak to your constituents in your own riding, as you would call it here. And so you speak to [indecipherable] and that’s what I did. I remember thinking things seemed so normal and yet it was an exceptional day and you could certainly feel the atmosphere. I reckon even before I met people you could feel an electric atmosphere in the in the wind. I also remember Andy Murray, the tennis player, tweeted, after a great deal of agonizing, I think, he decided that the yes vote was the right way for [indecipherable] [laughs]. I remember thinking, I wish, Andy, you’d said that yesterday [laughs] because obviously on the day of the referendum, on the election, the media is constrained of what they can report, and quite rightly so. It was an extraordinary day. In one sense, just like another day and in another sense this was Scotland's democratic chance to vote for independence after 300 years and more of union.

AMT: Why do you think the vote was lost?

ALEX SALMOND: I think a couple things happened. We started in the polls at about 28 percent and we finished at 45 percent. But, I suspect, about a week beforehand, maybe ten days beforehand, we hit the front. Now in that stage, that's about ten days before, there was a poll in The Sunday Times which showed the Yes in the lead and what the No campaign did, the British government, the British establishment, is they embarked on a two-tier strategy, finally realizing that there was a real threat, because they'd been pretty complacent up until then. And so they intensified the fear mongering, the scare mongering in a way which I detail in the book, some quite disgraceful activities of the London Treasury in particular, interfering with the financial sector, the Royal Bank of Scotland, various other things like that –so, intense scaremongering. On the other hand -it was like bad cop, soft cop - there was an offer, a new offer, you know, things that would have been impossible to offer Scotland only months before suddenly became produced like last minute rabbit out the hat. The three leaders of the unionist parties, the London parties - the Tories, the Labour, the Liberal Party – the suspended Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons and all rushed up to Scotland to say that they signed this new vow to Scotland. And basically Scotland, according to them, could have all the power it wanted if only it voted no. So it's a combination of the fear mongering on the one hand and then getting that the offer, listen, you can have all the power you wanted anyway. It was the thing that I think swung opinion back again. But, you know, you can look at these things in two ways. You can either say, goodness, we were just ahead with a week to go and we lost. Or you can say, we started at 28 percent and ended up at 45 percent. And that's the way, obviously, I like to look at things because since then, of course, the campaign and the energy has carried on. And it’s the yes side in the referendum who lost who looked like the winners and the no side who won who looked like the losers.

AMT: Of course, Quebec had two votes on sovereignty, one in 180, the other in 1995. What did you as leader take away from how the Parti Quebecois fought those referenda?

ALEX SALMOND: I don't think the two situations are particularly compatible, incidentally. They’re only compatible in the sense that it was a democratic vote. I mean, the Quebec referenda were organized, obviously, by Quebec. This referendum in Scotland was one which was agreed by the United Kingdom after a mandate in the Scottish election in 2011. So it was a consensual referendum, one that was agreed. I think that sort of thing is important. People have to know that if they vote in a certain direction, it's going to absolutely mean something. There’s other differences as well. But one thing I will say, when people have a democratic vote that should be respected. People asked me about, you know, do I support this movement or that movement. No, it's not my job to support movements in other countries. My job is to represent Scotland. But one thing I will say is in a world where violence and terrorism abounds and where the ballot box is a scarce thing in some ways in terms of the number of people on this planet, you should always cherish a constitutional democratic route to a political end. And people who choose that route deserve to be respected, because that's the way that societies move forward and resolve their differences and come to better conclusions. In terms of campaign lessons, I looked much more at more recent electoral contests, because, obviously, the social media was hugely important for the Yes campaign. I mean, in an atmosphere—People in other countries might find this difficult—In a country where just about every newspaper is campaigning against you, every single one and have been for a number of years, and one or two kind of neutral, and one single Sunday newspaper campaigning in favour of independence, there's not a course of the conventional media anyway to get your message across and therefore you have to rely very heavily on the social media which is what we did. So we devised new campaigning techniques, some of them from North America and by and large they were very, very successful. I mean, the overwhelming lesson, I would say, to anyone who wants to change society, who wants to change structures apart from abiding by a democratic formulation and staying strictly to that, the overwhelming lesson is that to a positive message. It's absolutely crucial when you're confronting the negativity, the scaremongering, the fear mongering campaign. If you want to have a substantial effect that motivates people and mobilizes them to go out to vote and to feel better about themselves and the country or the movement or a political party, then stick to a positive message as far as you possibly can, because it's that which has the lasting effect. The fear mongering might work for a short space of time. It might even win an election. But it won't achieve a goal and it certainly won’t achieve a dream.

AMT: In your book you write that the Conservative Party was, quote, “game planning”exactly on the Quebec referendum when it came to fighting against a yes in the Scottish referendum.

ALEX SALMOND: Yes. I mean, that there's no question that the people who took most lessons from the Quebec referendum, almost as if they discovered it some many years later. For example, their slogan became ‘No thanks,’ for example, non merci. [laughs] I mean, they were actually lifting slogans. I didn't think that aspect of it was particularly effective for them. I don't think you need to go tothe Quebec referendum or other places to engage in political scare mongering. You only need to look at the European referendum that’s taking place in the United Kingdom at the present moment. And there you see both sides embarked on the scare mongering campaign or ‘Project Fear,” as it came to be called in the Scottish referendum. And my comment on that is yes, of course, that you might scare some people for a short period of time, but you don't build anything substantial on negativity. And negativity in politics is one of the greatest or rots of the democratic system. It’s eating away at people's confidence and belief and self-esteem. But it doesn't get you anywhere in the in the long term. In fact, it consumes itself. As indeed, the no side in Scotland have found out since the referendum. Yes, they won the referendum, but they lost the country.

AMT: Well, you make the point the Conservatives promised Scotland, made promises if Scotland would stay in the United Kingdom. Have they lived up to their promises?

ALEX SALMOND: No, of course not. I mean, the promises which were articulated were for neo-federalism, home rule, or devo to the max, which means maximum devolution, everything except foreign affairs and defence, is usually what it means. And federalism, well, you know all about that in Canada. And Home Rule, traditionally, of course, was home rule within the empire originally was devised. So that's what they said. And these were the courts that they gave. What they've delivered is additional devolution. So instead of Scotland controlling about 15 percent of its taxation, it’s now to control 30 percent. Instead of controlling about five percent of its social security, it now controls about 20 percent. But the [indecipherable], the commanding heights of the economic and social security are still held in London. I mean, I was brought up to believe their three great lies in life. One was, ‘Darling, I’ll respect you in the morning.’ The second was, ‘The cheque is in the post.’ And the third is, ‘I'm from the London Treasury and I really want to help Scotland.’

AMT: [laughs] What would Scotland look like today had the referendum succeeded?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, we would just have become an independent country. I think that we would have found that many things would have been much easier than the No campaign would pretending, would have been into international institutions without any doubt whatsoever. In fact, we would have been welcomed international institutions, so, I think that that sort of thing. I think the European Union would have accepted us with open arms. I think the scare mongering—Well, actually, it sounds ridiculous now, of course, but the No campaign said that we would jeopardize our place in the European Union by voting yes. We’re not in the middle of a European Union referendum in the UK where it's neck and neck, so it sounds a bit ridiculous now, but nonetheless that was one of the scaremongers. We would've had challenges of course because Scotland is a major oil producer. Like Canada, like every other major oil producer we would have had budgetary challenges at the present moment.

AMT: Well, I want to ask about that, because the British Institute for Fiscal Studies says that Scotland's running a budget deficit three times the rest of the UK and that the collapse of the price of oil is what's hurting Scotland's economic forecast. Is that more financial scaremongering? How much does that affect your argument on Scotland now in finance?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, two things. One, you don't look at the finances of the country in one year. I mean, if you look to the finances of Canada this year, you would see a huge effect from the decline in the price of oil and that would be case for any oil producer. But the fact remains that in the last 31 years, there’s been more taxation raised per head in Scotland than the UK average. And therefore, the argument that Scotland couldn't survive and prosper as an independent country is ludicrous. [indecipherable] The other difficulty with that of course it assumes we would do the same things with our spending as the UK does at the present moment. I can tell you we wouldn't. We wouldn't be spending our share of 170,000 million pounds on a new generation of nuclear submarines [indecipherable] We wouldn't be investing something of the same order, maybe 160 billion pounds trying to build generations of new nuclear power stations, was the UK government's doing. We wouldn't be financing the high speed rail in England at the cost of perhaps 30 billion pounds. So there’s all sorts of areas of big white elephant expenditures a Scottish government could quite easily decide not to make and would have decided not to make. So the balance sheet would be altered by the different spending choices that you make. There's also a question about which comes to how you approach budgetary difficulties. Do you approach the budget difficulties-- and of course there was a debate which you had in the Canadian general election not that long ago. Do you approach them with by ever retrenchment of moving into a situation where you're constantly cutting, your constant moving into an austerity situation. Or do you approach budget deficits by saying, look, if we invest, put into capital investment, in infrastructure of the country, we improve our productivity, then we have got a good chance of moving into a better economic climate. Now, we favour that sort of economics and that sort of politics in Scotland. Some of the good things that have been happening in the Scottish economy shouldn’t be underrated. I mean, our productivity, which for some time had lagged behind that of the UK's, have now surged ahead of the UK. And a very good economist once said that in the long run productivity isn't everything, but it's almost everything, because it’s that which defines your ability to compete and succeed as a country. And Scotland as an economic entity would have been an extremely good bet.

AMT: Let's talk about the so-called Brexit because you just mentioned that you were threatened over EU membership but in June Britain will hold its referendum on whether it should stay in the European Union – the Brexit. How do you think that vote will go?

ALEX SALMOND: There's a generational gap between those who want to go for Brexit and those who want to remain. And that's the young by and large, not everybody, of course, but by and large are in favour of Europe and the older people are more hostile to it across the UK. There’s also a big geographical divide. Scotland is about two to one in favour of Europe and England has probably got a majority, a slight majority, against at the present moment. Now, why is important the way you conduct a campaign? Because the young people are less likely to vote in normal elections than older people. light with a vote in normal elections than older people. And if you fight - as the Prime Minister's fighting the present moment -another scare mongering, another fear mongering campaign, another project fear, it’s not the thing that mobilizes people to go and vote. People won’t, particularly, people not used to voting or don't usually vote in conventional elections. You've got to give them something worth voting for. And the prime minister is not doing that at the present moment. So I think the real danger to the remain side is that the scaremongering campaign may well dissuade some people from voting out. But it won't mobilize the people who actually believe in the European concept to come out of their houses and to vote to stay in. And I think that’s a [indecipherable].

AMT: What do you think it will mean for Scottish nationalism?

ALEX SALMOND: If Scotland were to vote yes, and that seems very likely, and if the UK as a whole were to vote marginally no, which seems possible, I still think the likelihood is probably a remain vote. But nonetheless, if that were to happen and that’s if Scotland were to be dragged out of Europe against our will by the predominant votes of people in England, then I'm pretty certain there would be another Scottish referendum on independence and that would happen in a defined period, within the next two years, I would say.

AMT: And I can see by the look in on your face that that dream is not going to die. You look like a happy man. [laughs]

ALEX SALMOND: [laughs] I suppose when you're out of office, right, you tend to look at things a bit out of context. It’s helpful, actually, to get a sense of perspective. You see, when I entered politics 30 years ago or so now, if somebody had said, look, there’s going to be a Scottish Parliament, most people would have said, not at all, not a chance, or at least a long shot, let's put it that way. And then if I’d said, well, actually, the SNP is going to be the government in that parliament and probably elected for three successive terms, they would have said, don’t be ludicrous. And if I said, look, the SNP is going to the place the Labor Party is the dominant party in Westminster politics from Scotland, they would have said—you know, they would have had me committed probably. But all of these things have happened. There's been a referendum on Scottish independence. The SNP and the cause of independence is alive, well, kicking, and looking forward to the future. So I think when you get a sense of perspective, okay, there’s still a bit of distance to travel, but look back and see the huge distance that we've already come.

AMT: I want to talk to you about another politician, a man who you have a very interesting relationship with, Donald Trump. I'm going to set up this clip by explaining his reference to the MOD is the British Ministry of Defence.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I think the MOD is a joke. I wouldn't want to be in a war with the MOD, the same people that made this decision, that I can tell you, because they know there's no technology that circumvents these 80-storey windmills. They caved to Alex Salmond, wh’s got a death wish for Scotland. I mean, he wants to destroy Scotland. He’s got, actually, a death wish.

AMT: Okay. Where do we start, Alex? What have you and the British Ministry of Defence done to join the long list of enemies of Donald Trump?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, I mean, certainly, if elections were decided on hyperbole, then nobody could hold a candle to Donald. What he’s actually talking about there- it’s not even a wind farm – he’s talking about 11 turbines – that’s 11, demonstrated, offshore turbines in Aberdeen Bay, which demonstrate different types of offshore wind technology. Something, incidentally, he’s been trying to block in the courts, although, he’s been beaten now three times, including the Supreme Court, most recently. And because he’s delayed the project, that project’s now in doubt and that would have been hugely valuable to an energy capital like Aberdeen, given the price of oil, to have that extra string to our bow demonstrating this technology. And the idea that the MOD or the Scottish Government shouldn't approve of 11 offshore demonstrator turbines just because it’s a few miles from Donald's golf course is simply and utterly ludicrous. Actually, there's only probably two bits in his golf course where you could see them. I mean, it's a very fine golf course, incidentally, but it’s got very high dunes. You’d sort of have to crick your neck, I think, about the fourth tee and sort of lean down the course and a few miles of it, you’d see 11 turbines, if they were built. But to Donald, of course, something like that becomes an arm wrestling contest. It loses all sense of proportion and context to what it’s actually about. I mean, it’s one of the reasons, incidentally, that he should get nowhere near the Oval Office and certainly his finger should be nowhere near a nuclear button, because if your Donald, given the way he reacts to the simplest thing, as soon as anyone says no to him, whether it’s the First Minister of Scotland or the Ministry of Defence or Uncle Tom Cobley and all, Donald goes from nowhere to nuclear in a passing moment.

AMT: Well, and you know him well, because at one time you were allies. What was that about?

ALEX SALMOND: Well, it was about the investment in Scotland. And I was enthusiastic about the golf course investment. In fact, I still am. I think it's a marvelous golf course. The problem is, of course, he promised billions of dollars for investment and thousands of jobs and a whole development and, of course, he’s delivered about maybe ten percent of that. I mean, the other point about exaggeration, of course, is one of Donald's handicaps. But, no, we didn't fall out really until, basically, I said no. And if I remember correctly, it was on the question of compulsory purchase or what they call in America, they call it eminent domain.

AMT: Or expropriating property, essentially?

ALEX SALMOND: Yes. He wanted to buy out properties near the golf course against the will of the people and I had to explain to him in a phone call that we didn't do that sort of thing in Scotland. And I remember exactly. He said, why not? I said, well, something called the Highland Clearances, Donald, which, if your mother, your Scottish mother might have mentioned to you, because we have scars in Scotland about the people being forcibly evicted from the land. So the idea of allowing compulsory purchases, we would call it, in Scotland, something you do for obviously for hospitals on motorways or things in the public interest. The idea of doing it for commercial development is just foreign to the Scottish idea. But the problem with Donald is if there’s anybody that says no to him, then he reacts as you heard in that clip. If that happened when he was about five years old, then he would a turned, in my view, into a more fully developed human being, but, unfortunately, it may be that nobody said no to Donald early enough and therefore when somebody says no to him now, he descends into a tantrum. Well, it's not for me-- I'm a Scottish politician. You know, if it’s not for Scotland or the UK or Canada, for that matter, to pine on the next president United States. I mean, you might have views which are more similar to some candidates than others, but, you know, it’s a matter for the people of America to choose their next president. So whether somebody is a Democrat or a Republican or left wing or right wing, to great extent, it’s not really our business. However, sanity and insanity is - and I think as observers on the international scene, we've got the right to come down on the side of sanity and against the side of insanity. And that's why many people internationally are hoping that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the presidency of the United States.

AMT: You leave here and head to New York - are you going to cause trouble for Donald Trump?

ALEX SALMOND: [laughs] I think that Donald, who, incidentally, once offered to endorse me in the 2011 Scottish elections—

AMT: What did you say?

ALEX SALMOND: I said I didn't think that would help me unduly, so I asked him not to. But I don’t think I'll be endorsing the Donald when I go to New York in the next few days.

AMT: Alex Salmond, thanks for coming in.

ALEX SALMOND: A pleasure, thank you.

AMT: Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party. His memoir is called The Dream Shall Never Die. He joined me in our Toronto studio. That is our program for today. Since we have just been talking about the Scottish independence movement it is worth noting that a little piece of Canadian separatist history was made public just this week by Quebec’s provincial archive. So we're going to leave you today with the speech that then Premier Jacques Parizeau had recorded for broadcast if the yes vote had been victorious in Quebec’s 1995 sovereignty referendum. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

JACQUES PARIZEAU: My dear friends, Quebec is standing tall. In a majority vote today, the Quebec people have just affirmed to the world that it exists. It is a serene and democratic affirmation, one that no one can ever erase. A strong and simple decision was made today. Quebec will become sovereign. And because Quebec is now standing tall it can, first of all, extend a hand to its Canadian neighbour through the offer of a new partnership founded on the principle of equality between people. From this time on we shall be guided by two words: Responsibility and solidarity. There is a third one too and I want to talk about it now. That word is courage, for courage was what Quebecers needed to surmount the tremendous obstacles that were put in their path from the very beginning until today. To adapt and survive in America while preserving their Francophone identity and over the course of 400 years to grow and to welcome all the new arrivals no matter what their language, their race, or their country of origin to build here a society that is modern, dynamic, and open to the world, to do all that while our very existence as a people was being denied, while we were being refused the means to flourish. This here again, it took courage for the men and women of Quebec to stand up to the fear, to reject the call to renunciation, and to a comfortable resignation. Today, my dear fellow Quebecers. you have inscribed your name upon the face of the world. You have done so in an exemplary manner.

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Apr. 6, 2016 Episode Transcript

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