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The Current Transcript for April 12, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Welcome, everyone, to the Model 3 unveil.

[Crowd cheers]

We have an amazing product to show you tonight

[Crowd cheers]

This is really important for the future of the world.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: There is a lot of anticipation around the Tesla Model 3, the so-called affordable electric car that Elon Musk predicts will change transportation forever. But if drivers want electric cars, they'll need charging stations, and everything from the grid to public parking lots to condo garages will have to accommodate them. Follow that trend, and the electric car loses novelty status and becomes a tangible threat to an industry long dominated by the care and feeding of the internal-combustion engine. In an hour, we look at a future driven to disruption. Also today, she understood that be a judge, she had to put her emotions on hold.

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You don't stop caring when you're a judge, but you are circumscribed by your role.

AMT: And yet, most every case over which Justice Marie Corbett presided involved human emotion and personal drama. And the very role she had once dreamed of fulfilling was not fulfilling enough. In half an hour, Marie Corbett shares her story of friendship and loss, and the soul-searching that prompted her to step off the bench. But we begin today with a story filled with so much personal trauma; so much that for too many, it becomes unbearable.

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Last night we had about 11 suicide attempts, and for the month of April itself, all together, it's 15. That's a lot.

AMT: Attawapiskat is a community in crisis. Aboriginal youth in Northern Ontario take their own lives at a rate 50 times the national average. Those trying to save them are begging for help. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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'Dying from hopelessness': Attawapiskat desperate to stop suicide pandemic

Guests: Jonathan Solomon, Charlie Angus, Dr. Laurence Kirmayer

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VOICE 1: What's it going to take to end this cycle of crisis and death among young people? What are the concrete steps for the long term that they're going to put on the ground, not just in Attawapiskat, but all the indigenous communities of this country?

[Applause]

VOICE 2: The Minister of Health.

VOICE 3: Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Member will find no argument with me. In fact, the budget contains $8.4 billion in funding for indigenous communities. It is these funds that will actually restore hope to communities.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It may be a tiny community, with a population of just 2,000, but Attawapiskat was front and centre in the House of Commons during Question Period yesterday, two days after the Northern Ontario First Nation declared a state of emergency. Suicide attempts in Attawapiskat are, unfortunately, nothing new. But there's been a shocking spate of them. More than 100 suicide attempts, and at least one death since September. And, according to Chief Bruce Shisheesh, who issued the emergency declaration last weekend, eleven residents attempted suicide last Saturday alone, including a ten-year-old child. Prime Minister Trudeau has called the situation "heartbreaking.” Both federal and provincial governments have flown an emergency medical assistance team into the community, including mental health workers. But local leaders say more needs to be done to address the underlying conditions driving so many people, especially young people, to despair. Jonathan Solomon is the Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council, of which Attawapiskat is a member nation. And we have reached him in Cochrane, Ontario. Hello.

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Hello.

AMT: Help us understand what's going on in Attawapiskat. What have you been hearing from community members there?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: A lot of concern in regards to this whole situation, what's happening in the community. They want leadership, and also the community to address the sad situation that's happening there.

AMT: Why are so many people trying to take their own lives?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: That's something that we need to find out. To get to the root of the situation, to assess what's really going on in the minds of especially the young people. As young as ten. Why do they come to the conclusion that that's the way to resolve their situation?

AMT: We hear a lot about, or we are hearing a lot just in the news now about the level of despair.

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Mhm.

AMT: Maybe you can help us understand where that comes from.

JONATHAN SOLOMON: There could be a lot of triggers that makes somebody feel the way they do, like hopelessness. There could be, you know, the living conditions, overcrowding. It could be something that they experienced at school, like bullying, or on the on the street, anything, to come to feel so... Hopelessness, sadly, they come to a conclusion that that’s the only way to solve the problem.

AMT: And you know, before this crisis team was sent in, how many healthcare workers were in at Attawapiskat to try to deal with this?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Sadly, there was only four people that were working there. We know there was only one crisis worker, and probably, you know, there was no mental health worker in the community for the last few months. The position has been vacant in that community. But sadly, too, that over 2,000 people, there is only one mental health worker in the community. Considering the situation there, you know, you need more than just one body to support and help the general population.

AMT: So how hopeful are you that this crisis team that's sent in will help?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Well I think, you know, in the short term, to the support and relief the community is going to, is going to really help the people that have been working around the clock for so long. But there needs to be a sustainable plan in regards to addressing the mental health workers. It doesn't make any sense to have one worker for 2,000 people. Because the Auditor General said himself, that the needs of the community are not being met, because everything is driven by formula instead of the needs, and this is one example of what the Auditor General is talking about.

AMT: Well, and there's a lot of attention on Attawapiskat right now, but it is not the only First Nations community facing a suicide crisis. How widespread is this problem, even in the area that you're responsible for?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: This is something that's been happening for the last few years, that we continue to lose people to suicides; not only in one particular area, like Fort Albany, Moose Factory, and it is happening all over northwestern Ontario. That is part of, sadly, you know, this is a continued problem. And it's something that we need to step up and start addressing. But it's going to take just more than leadership to address the problem, it has to be at the home level, too.

AMT: And so what can be done, what can the leadership do?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: I think we need to get together as communities, you know, leadership need to come together with their people and talk about solutions. Talk about how we get out of the situation that we are in. That’s the only way I think this can alleviate the situation at the community levels.

AMT: But you're saying you can't do it alone, you need the governments to step in and step up?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Well, the governments have to be part of it. Like I said, we need, communities need resources. We’re not asking for a blank check here, we're asking, what we're saying is, we need the resources to be able to address the many issues that we face in our communities. There's no hidden agenda or anything like that. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had a number of recommendations in regards to the impacts of the residential school, and this is one good example of impacts, you know?

AMT: How hopeful are you that the fact that this crisis is getting this kind of attention will actually shift something for the future?

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Well I think the national chief said, calls this a national crisis. The Prime Minister tweeted that it's heartbreaking, and it's something that really needs to be addressed with the indigenous population in Ontario. There's a lot of concern from the general public, and if we can band together and start working together, I think we’ll go a long way.

AMT: Jonathan Solomon, thank you for your thoughts on this.

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Okay, thank you very much.

AMT: Bye, bye.

JONATHAN SOLOMON: Bye, bye.

AMT: Jonathan Solomon, Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council, of which Attawapiskat is a member nation. He spoke to us from Cochrane, Ontario. Charlie Angus is no stranger to the pain in Attawapiskat. As the NDP Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay, which includes the northern Ontario First Nation, he has often called for more resources and better support for the community. As his party's indigenous affairs critic, he has called on the federal government to adopt a national action plan to deal with what he calls a suicide "pandemic" in First Nation communities. Charlie Angus in on the line from Ottawa. Hello.

CHARLIE ANGUS: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you make of what we just heard from Grand Chief Solomon?

CHARLIE ANGUS: Grand Chief Solomon has really been front and centre in trying to raise awareness on these issues for a number of years. He called for an inquiry a couple of years ago, working with both levels of government, to start to find solutions before this whole thing blew up. And nobody responded, the communities ended up doing it themselves.

AMT: Attawapiskat has had many problems over the years. It's been in the news asking for help over the years. Why is the situation so dire now, still?

CHARLIE ANGUS: I think there's a number of issues that we're dealing with. And they're obviously always complicated. You know, crushing poverty in some of the families gives so much sense of hopelessness. But we have a continual policy at the federal level of denial of mental health services. Even as Chief Jonathan Solomon was talking to you, I was getting a Facebook message from a young teenager in one of the nearby communities who said, we don't even have any mental health workers in our community.

AMT: Well, in fact, local youth are trying to tackle the problem. There was a healing walk against suicide that took place just days before this emergency, was there not?

CHARLIE ANGUS: There was an incredible walk of young people, I’m seeing photos of young people who are holding rallies in the various communities. You know, when Canadians saw that picture young Alan Kurdi, it was a heartbreaking moment, and we stood up as a nation and said, we could make a difference. I think there needs to be, talking with some of the young people are saying, we want to be heard. We could do a national forum where we invite the young people to come forth and task them with offering solutions. But it's going to cost. You know, there's no money in this budget for mental health on reserve. There's nothing. So we talk 8.4 billion, well, that's great, but this is a national crisis affecting youth. We need to talk about how we can pair up with civil society and both levels of government to encourage grassroots leadership. And it's going to come from the communities, it's not coming from outside, but giving them the resources. And Anna Maria, I think the most perfect image for Canadians to know of the situation is that, you know, Attawapiskat with its poor housing stock, and terrible housing conditions, there's a beautiful building at the edge of town that was built by the federal and provincial government. It has a beautiful plaque in there. And it sits empty. It was a healing lodge, and in the previous Liberal government, the Conservatives, of course, never spent much on anything on these things, but the previous Liberal government built these healing centres, and there was all these buildings that were put up. And then there was never any program dollars to follow through. So we have a healing lodge, but we never had any resources to do the healing. And I think that’s the disconnect that Ottawa needs to sort of, right now, at this point in time, get its head around it.

AMT: Well I want to ask you a little bit about what governments have done, because, as you know, this is not the first time this community has declared a state of emergency. It did so five times since 2006 for poor drinking water, for contaminated and inadequate housing, for flooding and sewer backups. How have leaders from all levels of government allowed a crisis to perpetuate for so long?

CHARLIE ANGUS: This is, I think, the million dollar question, Anna Maria. I’ve actually lost count of the states of emergency that have been declared in the communities I represent. And all too often, the government's response is either very cynically, to try and wait it out, which we've seen in some of these situations. Certainly in the last suicide pandemic state of emergency that was declared, they ended up waiting it out and then actually laying off the front line child care workers after the media attention had gone away. That culture has to stop. I was encouraged yesterday on the conference call with the community, to hear various levels of government ministries all on that phone call. But at the community said to them, why did it take a state of emergency to get everyone here, and is there going to be a long term response? That, I think, is what everyone in Canada is saying. We've got to stop this cycle of putting band-aids on septic wounds, and then moving the band-aid to another community, and to another septic wound. We need to start talking with a long term commitment and a structural shift to encourage the young people in this country, indigenous country, that they are valued. And we cannot take it as okay that they are giving up hope and such numbers, it’s just, it’s not acceptable in a country like ours.

AMT: You have, you've called this a pandemic.

CHARLIE ANGUS: Well, when we see the numbers, 26 in Attawapiskat in March, and then the numbers spike in April. I'm not a psychologist, all I can say is, what I’ve seen is that, when we have a suicide happen in a school, in a suburban school, they send in emergency counselors right away, they send in the grief counselors. They stabilize the situation. This is certainly a pandemic. The numbers are just mind numbing, and we've had, I think, almost 700-plus attempts, just in the northern part of my riding alone since 2009. And when, I’ve been at too many funerals of young people. So yeah, they're dying from hopelessness.

AMT: Charlie Angus, it's important to hear your voice, thank you.

CHARLIE ANGUS: Thank you so much, Anna Maria.

AMT: Charlie Angus is the NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay in northern Ontario, an area which includes the Attawapiskat First Nation. He's also the author of Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream. We reached Charlie Angus in Ottawa. Attawapiskat is not alone among First Nation communities when it comes to grappling with an onslaught of suicide attempts. You just heard the numbers that Charlie Angus gave us. And it is a phenomenon that Dr. Laurence Kirmayer has studied. He is Co-Director of the Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research, and Director of the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. He joins us from Montreal. Hi, Dr. Kirmayer.

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Hello.

AMT: How common is it to see so many suicide attempts in an indigenous community the size of Attawapiskat?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well, I think an event like this is unusual in the sense that it's clearly not an everyday occurrence, but it certainly has occurred many times before, and is occurring in other communities on a sporadic basis. In many populations, cluster suicides like this might represent one to two per cent of suicides. But it's a more common pattern in indigenous communities in Canada and other places, to have many people affected in a small community.

AMT: And you say cluster, is that because they're connected, or, why do you use that word?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well, the word cluster in this context means, first of all, that things are occurring in roughly the same time and space, and the assumption is that’s because things are connected, that people are reacting to the fact of suicide in their community among people they're close to. And that's reverberating in very powerful ways within the community.

AMT: Well I want to ask you something. The CBC’s own reporter, who's in Attawapiskat right now, Olivia Stefanovich, is reporting this morning that a forum with young people and mental health workers to talk about suicide that was supposed to happen last night was cancelled, because too many young people were brought to hospital so they wouldn't harm themselves. How do you react to that?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well I think that's a sign of just how far things have gone without intervention, without prevention, in a way that would really prevent this kind of a cascade. I also think it's difficult when people are in acute pain for them to sit together and talk. That that's the time when something more focused, in the form of crisis counseling, in the form of a safe space for people, may be needed for individuals. The time to sit together is when the immediate crisis is not as intense, and when people can really mobilize their own resilience and their own problem-solving, to work together.

AMT: There are also reports of children as young as ten attempting to take their own lives. Also reports as young as seven. How is that even possible?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well, it certainly is a different phenomenon for very young children, in the sense that their own sense of time and their horizon for the future and so on is different for developmental reasons. But when you're in a small community where everyone is related, knows each other well, is connected in a whole variety of ways, the idea of suicide is a kind of toxic idea, about a way to deal with extreme hopelessness and despair and powerlessness, spreads among everyone. And even without fully thinking it through, the model or the example is there before you, and that has a powerful effect, even on young children.

AMT: Now, you're involved in a program that promotes positive mental health in indigenous communities. Can you tell us what you do?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well, this is one of several programs going on across Canada that tries indirectly to deal with the problem of suicide and related mental health problems, by promoting positive mental health. It's called Listening to One Another to Grow Strong, it's supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the idea behind it really is to use local culture and language and identity as a vehicle to strengthen families, to strengthen youth’s sense of their own competence and hopefulness and connection to the past and to the future. These are precisely the things that were disrupted through the long history of colonialism within Canada, the residential schools, and the various other structural problems that have arisen from the longstanding suppression of indigenous culture and identity. So the idea is to help communities to strengthen their own local sense of competence, of resilience and of identity, and to use that as a vehicle to enable young people to have a better sense of themselves, and a more hopeful sense the future.

AMT: And that, of course, is a longer term project.

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: That's a long term project, it's a process that starts from the point of view of building on resilience and strength. It has to go hand in hand with more immediate crisis oriented services, and perhaps the most important interventions in the long run are going to be structural interventions that enable young people to have job opportunities, educational opportunities, to have a brighter vision of the future that allows them to both live in relation to their families and their communities, and to engage with larger streams and currents and possibilities in the world.

AMT: So the sending a crisis team into Attawapiskat, do you approve of that?

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: Well I think it's necessary when you're in this kind of a crisis, people need outside resources. One of the dilemmas in the community is community workers who come from within the community are themselves connected to many of the people who are suffering. So the emotional burden on the community worker is significant. And again, it's quite different than the situation in a big city, when you might see a mental health worker, who although they're affected by your plight, are not so personally connected and they can therefore be there for you. In many indigenous communities which are small, everyone is affected. And so finding a method to support local mental health services that come from the grassroots and have all the local knowledge, but that get the kinds of emotional support, the kinds of practical resources that they need from the outside, has got to be part of the solution.

AMT: Dr. Kirmayer, thanks for your thoughts on this.

DR. LAURENCE KIRMAYER: I'm glad to be of help.

AMT: Dr. Laurence Kirmayer is Co-Director of the Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research, he’s also Director of the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. And we reached him in Montreal. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Retired judge Marie Corbett reflects on feeling 'powerless over crime'

Guests: Marie Corbett

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come.

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[Oohs and aahs]

AMT: The engine may not make much noise, but the passengers sure do while test driving the new Tesla Model 3. It is the electric car that some say could help electric cars finally go mainstream. We'll talk about that in half an hour. But first, a judge's decision.

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Dedicated. Outstanding. And inspirational. Just some of the words used by her nominators to describe Madam Justice, Marie Corbett.

AMT: Well, that's from a night more than two decades ago when Marie Corbett walked on stage to collect a Women of Distinction award from the YWCA. She was a Superior Court Judge in Ontario at the time known for her judicial acumen and her activism.

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MARIE CORBETT: The pace of social change is slow. Women have been legal persons for a mere 60 years. 1993 is the 50th anniversary of the appointment of the first woman judge. A second was not appointed by the Government of Canada until 1965, another 22 years. Only three women who have been appointed judges by the Government of Canada have so far died. Our history is still with us. Every woman here is a pioneer.

AMT: Well, who would have guessed that night however, was that a mere five years later after accepting that award, Marie Corbett would retire from the bench. She was 55 years old when she stepped down from being a judge and she's sharing her story now of why she walked away from that distinguished post, a move she says was inspired by the loss of a dear friend. Marie Corbett's book is entitled January: A Woman Judge’s Season of Disillusion. She now splits her time between her home in Newfoundland and Tampa, Florida and that's where the Honourable Marie Corbett is today. Hello.

MARIE CORBETT: Good morning.

AMT: We don't often hear from former judges, why is that?

MARIE CORBETT: Judges are schooled in being circumspect and in being discreet, and they tend to speak through their cases. We do not wish judges to become personalities and it is a discipline of being a judge [laughs].

AMT: A lot of judges don't leave either, do they?

MARIE CORBETT: Judges do not leave, yes. Historically, on average, male judges were appointed at age 55 and then were entitled to a full pension at 65, 15 years later. As well, judges can go supernumerary at that point, which is a form of part time judging. And that can be done for another ten years. It became a little different when women were appointed to the bench because women on average were appointed ten years earlier so that, in a sense, they work longer in order to enjoy the benefits of retirement. So, I suppose by the time a judge retired from the bench at age 75, there was not a lot of creative energy left.

AMT: Well, you did leave the bench and your decision was sparked by the death of your friend. Tell us about Anne.

MARIE CORBETT: Anne was a woman lawyer. She died at age 46. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. And when she had that diagnosis, she made a decision that she would continue to live life as she had fully engaged as a lawyer, as a mother, as a wife, and especially as a member of the community. She founded Wellspring while she was suffering from cancer, three years before her death and there are now many cancer support centres in Canada that she started. She founded Wellspring because when she was diagnosed with cancer, she had nowhere to turn and she realized that there was a need not just for cancer patients, but also for the families of cancer, and that's how it was born.

AMT: You were very involved at the end of her life. What was it about that experience that made you rethink your work as a judge?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, I saw Anne as an engaged, active woman and I think when a friend that you love dies at an early age it does cause you to re-evaluate how you want to live. And when Anne decided to live life in the same way as she did before, I realized that I did not. Law, at that time, was consuming me and I cared about other aspects of myself and life and decided to change my life.

AMT: You have talked about feeling powerless, and I was really surprised at that word because I would think that being a judge is a position with all kinds of power.

MARIE CORBETT: It is very much a position of power and prestige and importance and it's a valuable public role. I think I was overwhelmed by powerlessness first in the case of Anne because she was powerless over her cancer, and then in a way, I was powerless, too, over what came before me. I was powerless over crime. I kind of looked at crime and cancer as flip sides of the coin. One was a physical pathology and one was a social pathology. I often think of doctors and lawyers as the other side of the same coin. They are both service professions; one deals with the physical, one deals with the social, more or less, and I was powerless over crime. In addition, I, throughout my career, had been very, as you described it, active. I cared what happened to women in matrimonial law and in marriage breakdown. I cared that workers got their full pensions and that they had vesting and portability rights. I cared about the environment and worked hard to have the very first environmental protection act enacted in Ontario. I was a member of the first Status of Women council in Ontario. And I cared about the problems that women had specifically. And when I became a judge, I didn't stop caring, but I was powerless to do anything about, it in a sense. For example, I described four cases in the book that I was involved in at the time, and the first one was a sexual assault case with a young girl. She was 16 at the time that she was giving her evidence and she described a history of sexual touching.

AMT: This is the young woman named Alma that you had found.

MARIE CORBETT: Yes, and she was the only witness in the case and the defense called evidence and the accused took the stand, and of course, not of course, but he denied it and as well, his evidence was supported by another witness. At the end of the case, I concluded that while I believed Alma, I was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the sexual assault was proved beyond a reasonable doubt and I acquitted the accused. But, I cared for Alma, I was concerned. I thought, my goodness what's going to happen to her? I pictured and hoped that her social worker or case worker would say to her, well Alma, the judge believed you but didn't find the accused guilty, and I wondered how would Alma deal with that? And yet I knew legally, I was on sound ground, her evidence was too unreliable to convict the accused. You don't stop caring when you're a judge, but you are circumscribed by your role.

AMT: There's so much to ask about in what you've just answered, so let's pick a little bit of this apart and go back to that idea of power. How did you view your job when you first began, and how did that change as you went along?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, when I was first appointed a judge, I was absolutely terrified. One of the first cases I had or duties was to decide whether somebody was mentally incompetent. And I thought, oh my goodness, how can I possibly decide that? Well, eventually you do. I was also terrified of having to make judgments on whether people were lying or not. In ordinary life, we don't examine what people say with that scrutiny and yet you do. You have to find facts, you have to say so and so lied, or so and so didn't lie and it was extremely challenging so therefore, yes you do have a lot of power. You decide civil cases, you decide whether people are going to jail or not, whether people will be deprived of their liberty. It's extremely powerful in that sense. However, being an idealist, I probably became a judge thinking that I had more power to affect justice with a capital J and find truth with a capital T. I came to realize that my role was much more narrow, in a sense. My primary duty was to ensure, and is to ensure, that an accused person has a fair trial. It's not an inquiry into the whole truth of something that happened before. It's not your role to dispense an overall justice for all the parties that come before you. You decide the case that comes before you in accordance with the law.

AMT: You talk about the robes you had to wear as being particularly heavy after certain difficult cases. What do you mean by that?

MARIE CORBETT: In a way, I always felt like I was wearing men's clothes walking into a court to administer men's laws. It's the uniform that's been worn by judges for centuries and I have no problem with it but, it is somewhat intricate. In the United States, the judges merely put a robe over whatever clothes they're wearing, but as you know in Canada, it's a little more complicated.

AMT: When you finished a case and you felt that heaviness, what was it like for you emotionally?

MARIE CORBETT: It can be very draining. You can get a satisfaction that you've done a good job. I consider that I was a good judge and a good lawyer and being a judge and a lawyer involves a lot of thinking. I mean, emotion really has no part in the adjudication of court cases. If you're feeling emotional during a case, you should excuse yourself and take a break. It's not the function of a judge to be emotional and yet it's a very large part of our lives.

AMT: And I would imagine that you take some emotion home that you weren't allowed to show.

MARIE CORBETT: That's right. I remember when I was first appointed and we had women judges dinner. One woman said, well Marie, you just can't take it home with you and I said to her, probably a bit abruptly, and I said that if I couldn't take it home, then I didn't want to do it. So, I really felt I had an obligation for that to stay with me. It does stay with you. A lot of the trauma, and the sorrow, and tragedy that is experienced by people is shocking.

AMT: You know, I think we forget there's a lot of very raw emotion before a judge in a courtroom every day, right?

MARIE CORBETT: There is, yes. I've had cases where a married couple broke the major bones of their newborn baby, every major bone. I had a six-year-old girl, I watched her plaiting and unplaiting the ears of her bunny as she wouldn't look over the witness stand at the accused. I had witnesses who were victimized by the husband physically and sexually and she permitted him, in a sense, to do the same to the children. And she was so traumatized that when she walked across the street, she would carry a hat pin so that she could stick herself so that she wouldn't go back into unconsciousness or blackout and these people don't go away. Their tragedy doesn't go away. They live rent free here in your [uncomfortable chuckle] brain.

AMT: It's an interesting way to put it. What was it like for you writing a book when you had to describe how it felt going through an emotional time, when for so long you had to keep your emotions hidden?

MARIE CORBETT: Oh it was very, very difficult. I have written a lot of legal articles and of course legal judgements, and I write in a very succinct style. To be writing creatively requires getting in touch with your emotions. And I remember my editor saying to me, well what was Marie feeling, and I'd say back, feeling? I mean, I really almost didn't know. In fact, I took three acting courses in order to become more aware of my own emotions and to find out how to express them in order to write the book.

AMT: That's extraordinary. I understand why the law needs to be-- you have to take a step back and you can't let emotion intervene. At the same time, the law deals with true crime, it deals with sensationalism, it deals with emotion and trauma at its most acute point.

MARIE CORBETT: Yes, it does indeed.

AMT: So, is that a contradiction, that emotion can have no part in it? Or, is that a dangerous, slippery slope?

MARIE CORBETT: Oh, you can't have emotion. You have to use reason. I mean, the doubt in a criminal case, it's not an emotional doubt, it's a reasonable doubt, you have to be sure of the guilt. Emotion really should not at all play a part, and we so instruct jurors that emotion really has no play. You have to decide the case on the evidence only that's in the trial, and really, I had no difficulty with that. I've been intellectual all my life. I've used my brain all my life. It comes naturally, in a sense. Or, it came naturally to me. I wasn't an emotional person.

AMT: You also weren't happy. You actually write at one point that you didn't know a female judge who was happy.

MARIE CORBETT: I think I said that I didn't know anyone that was having any fun [laughs].

AMT: [laughs] Okay.

MARIE CORBETT: Like we weren't having fun—

AMT: I’m projecting yes, but it's still pretty heavy to say that.

MARIE CORBETT: Well, it's how I felt. I didn't feel like I was having any fun. I described my life pretty accurately at that time and it wasn't fun and, I should add that being happy, or having fun was never a goal in my life. I was extremely career driven and in fact, in my 20s, I didn't want to get married or have children. So, whenever I accomplished something, I felt proud and I was thrilled, for example, to be appointed a judge. I came from a coastal village in Newfoundland and was the first person in my family to go to university and I worked my way through university as a cocktail waitress and a ballroom dance teacher and then, even when I went to law school in Toronto, I was a cocktail waitress at the Blue Orchid on Bloor St, terrified that some law students might see me working there. So, it was a thrill and an honour to be a judge. But, if you asked me if I was happy, I wouldn't have known what to say. I was proud, I felt good, I was thrilled and it was never one of my goals. I wanted to be successful [laughs], I wanted a career.

AMT: And it was because of the death of a friend and then all of this combination of things that made you re-examine what--

MARIE CORBETT: Exactly.

AMT:-- what happened.

MARIE CORBETT: Yes, that’s right. I realized that law was dominant in my life and yet, there were so many other things to do. For example, I sat in a windowless box for 13 years and I craved the beauty of nature, I craved the outdoors and I didn't have that.

AMT: Well, let's talk a little bit more about being in the windowless box because you had talked about Alma and a sex assault case. She reaches you in court at about the age of 17, but this is a case that goes back to her early childhood and you did come to some conclusions with that story. What did that story tell you about how complainants are treated in court?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, complainants essentially are like any other witness. There is a legal vacuum with respect to complainants and the victim, or sexual assault victim, has no clear rights in criminal law. The rights are that an accused person is presumed innocent and is found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And, the problem is exacerbated by the nature of the adversarial system. It's one side against the other. It's not an inquiry. The lawyers decide which witnesses will be called and what evidence will be put before the court. In one-witness cases, be it a child or an adult, witnesses are subject to excruciating cross-examination. This is typical. Cross-examination in any matter is not pleasant and it is an extremely difficult ordeal. I think few of us can withstand a detailed cross-examination on intimate matters in our lives. It's most unpleasant.

AMT: Who is the trial really for, then?

MARIE CORBETT: The trial is for the accused, there's no question. The trial is to enable the Crown to prove that the allegations are accurate, and that his guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt.

AMT: You have made the point that your goal of course, is to ensure there's a fair trial for a defendant as a judge. But complainants and victims don't have a right to a fair trial.

MARIE CORBETT: That's correct.

AMT: Should that change? Is that changing?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, I think that is a time in history that the Ghomeshi case, for example, is a watershed case and all of this is being re-examined at this time, which is good.

AMT: But just to be clear, your disillusionment with the bench was not based solely on cases involving sexual assault.

MARIE CORBETT: No. At the time, I was doing mostly criminal law and I realized that my role really was limited.

AMT: So, what were you seeing that was making you realize that increasingly?

MARIE CORBETT: I probably had too much exposure to the victims of crime and I felt like I could do little about it. I also saw that 98 percent of perpetrators of violent crimes were men, and that was distressing. There is a lot of disrespect for women in the culture and I felt I could do more by writing and having a new life than continuing to do the same things in the criminal justice system.

AMT: And when you decided to step away, when you decided to retire, what was the reaction?

MARIE CORBETT: There was shock. I think there are probably not even five judges who have ever retired early. I think there is only one other woman that has retired early as well. It's rare. And it's rare because obviously, being a judge is a very important position. It's intellectually challenging, it's extremely interesting, so why would you leave it?

AMT: You have always spent a good part of your life as well involved in promoting women and their success in the legal field. What kind of barriers did you face?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, you must remember that when I was appointed a judge, women were three percent of the judiciary. Basically, it was just like entering law school. We were freaks, in a way. You can imagine that men and judges who were accustomed to being amongst themselves, in the dining room of judges and in the common room and coffee rooms of judges, only being in the company of men and all of a sudden there are women. Women have not been in public life until the second half of the 20th century. So, the interaction between men and women in public life is new. It's an ongoing process, it's an ongoing process for lawyers, too, how to interact with each other in a professional environment. And it doesn't come overnight. A lot of women judges, for example, and perhaps anywhere, become what I call male equivalents; that you can't say that this is a female thing or this is a male thing and of course, justice doesn't have a male or female face and it can't, but there are realities to the fact that you are working in a male dominated workplace. Women judges at the outset had some of the same problems that any other career woman has in a male dominated profession.

AMT: And you've been retired for 20 years, do you think it's changed in that time?

MARIE CORBETT: Well, as I read newspapers and the press, not a lot has changed, no. I have no problem, for example, when I was first a judge, a lot of women would say, oh I don't want tokenism, I want to get it on my own merit. My view at the time was and, it still is, it doesn't matter if it's tokenism, take it. You have to get there, you have to be out there. I used to give speeches to law students and tell them, you have a right to be just as mediocre as any man [laughs]. We are always telling ourselves that we have to be better than men or do a job better when actually, we don't. We shouldn't have that guilt that we have to do better. We can be ordinary.

AMT: And on a personal level, you lost a dear friend, you left your job, you divorced, you wanted to have another life. What does that life look like now?

MARIE CORBETT:[laughs] Well, I write, I travel and I'm happy. And I exercise. I'm healthier than I was. I always wanted to tap dance, so I do and I have, what I consider now, a very engaged and happy life.

AMT: And you look back on the legal life that you had before and miss it all?

MARIE CORBETT: I was in law for 30 years and I can say that I do not miss it at all.

AMT: Marie Corbett, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

MARIE CORBETT: Thank you very much for having me.

AMT: Marie Corbett is a former Ontario Supreme Court Judge. Her book is called January: A Woman Judge’s Season of Disillusion, and she joined us from Tampa, Florida. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius SFXM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Future looks bright for electric cars but Canada's infrastructure is lacking

Guests: Peter Cheney, Jest Sidloski, Alex Louis

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

SOUNDCLIP

Welcome, everyone, to the Model 3 unveil. I think you're going to be blown away. Do you want to see the car? Alright, let’s bring it out.

[crowd cheering]

So what do you think?

[crowd cheering]

Alright. And this is kind of crazy, but I just learned, I was just told that the total number of orders for the Model 3 in the past 24 hours is now past 115,000.

[crowd cheering]

AMT: Well, that's the inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiling the latest creation from his electric car company the Tesla Model 3 and the pre-orders just kept on coming in after that announcement. That was April 1st. Right now the orders for the car stand at 325,000, continues to grow. That adds up to 14 billion dollars US worth of electric cars. And that doesn't just make the Model 3 the biggest production launch in history. It says something important about consumer appetite for electric cars. Until now e-vehicles have been confined to a fairly niche lane. They make up just one percent of Canadian cars right now. But many, including Tesla itself, believe the Model 3 will be a game changer thanks in large part to its more affordable price tag. The federal government seems poised to help in the mainstreaming of electric vehicles. It has dedicated more than 62 million dollars in last month's federal budget to improve alternate forms of travel, which includes increasing the number of electric car charging stations. Here's Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr.

SOUNDCLIP

To make sure that people can go greater distances. So when they get in their car they know that they're actually going to get to the lake or get to where it is they want to be and that there will be a place where they can charge the vehicle that will take half an hour or less than half an hour over time. With political will, with partnerships, with private investors that we will move down the road to where we all want to be which is to the greener transportation sector in Canada.

AMT: Well, the appropriately named Minister responsible, Jim Carr. Today, we're asking just how far down the road Canada still needs to go and how ready the country is for an influx of electric cars. Peter Cheney is the National Driving columnist with The Globe and Mail. He joins me in our Toronto studio. Welcome.

PETER CHENEY: Thank you.

AMT: Is this a watershed moment for the future of the electric car industry?

PETER CHENEY: Yes, it is. You know, remember that once upon a time the car itself was a niche product. And it eventually went mainstream so we’re watching the rise of the electric car and the Model 3 really is a watershed moment, because finally we have an electric car that people care about, that they can actually afford.

AMT: Why is the future so seemingly dependent on Tesla and its success?

PETER CHENEY: Well, the mainstream manufacturers really didn't take electric cars seriously. They really didn’t see much of a market in it and they're very tied to the infrastructure of the internal combustion car. They made a lot of money from it. So Tesla is an audacious and very different company and they're an upstart and they believe in electric cars. And so the product is better than the one that's been built by the major manufacturers. It’s the first electric car that I tested that I actually liked.

AMT: Why are so few Canadians driving electric cars now?

PETER CHENEY: Well, for now, they're very expensive so it’s in early adopter phase. So the guys who have electric cars right now are wealthy and they're prepared to invest in new technology. The price is going to come down and then you'll see a more widespread adoption, but it's still early days.

AMT: Now, the Tesla that you test drove, what’s the price on that?

PETER CHENEY: That one was about 135 or 140,000 dollars. That was a loaded Model S P85, five which was the fastest Tesla at the time. So, mine was the kind of car that people bought in 2014. It was a loaded, super-fast, super- luxurious electric car that showed you what electric power could really do. It was basically a five-seater Porsche that didn’t make any noise.

AMT: How does that compare now to—Like, the new Tesla will would be worth what?

PETER CHENEY: It’ll start at around 35,000 US. So, optioned up in Canada, it’ll be more like 55, but that’s still inexpensive compared to their previous cars. Their industrial strategy is very clear. They wanted to get the early adopters on board, get them to evangelize about the car. Then they prepare a lower-priced car that they could sell to the masses.

AMT: And how many other electric cars are out there?

PETER CHENEY: There's quite a few and I’ve tested them. There's a BMW i3. There's the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. There's the Nissan Leaf. There's more and I've driven them all, but none of them are really inspiring cars. None of them are a car I would buy. The Model S is a car I would buy if it was 140,000 dollars with options.

AMT: And we're not talking hybrids here? We're talking solely—

PETER CHENEY: Pure electric. There's a lot of misunderstanding. I just read an interesting story out of Simon Fraser about how people didn't actually understand the difference between these different power chains. So a hybrid is a car that uses electricity and gas power. The Toyota Prius is the best known example of that car. Then there's the pure EV, which is a pure electric car. You've got internal combustion and there’s diesel gasoline, electric, and hybrid. Those are the four platforms.

AMT: How ready is the infrastructure in Canada to support a growing number of electric cars?

PETER CHENEY: It's not that ready. Ideally, what you want is high amperage chargers like the Tesla supercharger, which makes the electric car really usable. When I drove up the west coast in the Model S I went from supercharger to supercharger like a giant hummingbird from flower to flower. It was fantastic. So these are really powerful chargers. You could have an electric chair execution one with one of these things. It's a big electric—

AMT: Well, good to know. [laughs]

PETER CHENEY: Well, just in case. So, it's a really high average charge of the charges car quickly. If you're charging on a 110 outlet, it might take you three days. So what we need is more high amperage chargers. And when that comes it's a chicken-and-egg situation. When there are more chargers there will be more cars. A lot of people are waiting for that. But the Tesla supercharger is a fantastic charging system.

AMT: Okay. Well, I've got somebody to talk to charger with waiting in the wings here. Jest Sidloski is the Director of Peavey Mart in Red Deer, Alberta. His company is a retailer that installs public charging stations at its locations. Hi.

JEST SIDLOSKI: Good morning.

AMT: So, tell us about the charging stations you install.

JEST SIDLOSKI: Yeah, so we have close to 40 locations in Western Canada and the charging stations that we are installing at our locations are level two chargers. So a brief description of the charging stations, as Peter touched base on, level one is your standard 110 plug-in at a house. Then we move up to level two. And our level two is there about 100 amp and then you will move up to a level three charging station or a Tesla charging station, which is the fast charge system. So, our locations install the level two models.

AMT: And how long would it take to charge a car on a level two?

JEST SIDLOSKI: Now, like, gas powered vehicles, they each hold a different amount of gas and they each go different range on that gas as well, so no one electric car can be painted with the same brush. But you're looking at close to three hours, you know, maybe over four hours for a full charge on a level two charging station.

AMT: Okay. And you've got these outside your retail outlets now?

JEST SIDLOSKI: That's right.

AMT: How many?

JEST SIDLOSKI: We have close to 38 installed, but we're not finished our project and we've made the commitment to continue installing these with every location we open.

AMT: How many at each stop?

JEST SIDLOSKI: Sorry. We have one at each stop, but that's kind of-- Right now, we're seeing that that's all we need. So the big argument is that the infrastructure is not there and then while I would agree that the level three fast-charging infrastructure is not there, there is more infrastructure to support EVs and there is EVs on the road currently. So, there isn't lineups, there isn't people waiting at these stations.

AMT: Okay. So this is outside every Peavey Mart?

JEST SIDLOSKI: That's right.

AMT: And what is Peavey Mart?

JEST SIDLOSKI: Peavey Mart is a retailer that is located in Western Canada. So, it is hardware, agriculture, homesteading, that kind of a retail store.

AMT: So, while it's charging I could go in there and buy a lot of stuff.

JEST SIDLOSKI: That's right. So, while people come charge - for free, mind you—Alberta, unlike most of Canada, Alberta cannot re-sell power, so as Ontario and Quebec, I believe, they can charge people to use their charging stations, we cannot, so our charging stations are all offered for free to the public whether they’re shopping with us or not.

AMT: Okay. So, what's the investment in it for you then? Why are you doing this?

JEST SIDLOSKI: So, there is initial investment, which varies, again, on location and charger size, but that can go anywhere from a nice cheap install of 2,000 and it can go up to a number that people would probably not understand, so we won't go to the high end there, but—

AMT: Okay. But I guess I’m really asking—If it’s for free, what's in it for you?

JEST SIDLOSKI: Well, I mean, first of all, we wanted to enhance our green initiatives at our own company, so behind closed doors and in talking about it, it was a personal choice. We have a very green conscious leader and that was a very important decision for him to make. And so we decided as a group that that's what we would do and then I guess if we get some new customers out of it and a community out of it, which we have seen, that's just icing on the cake.

AMT: Okay. So you're positioning yourself as the one who's got these there now. How quickly are electric vehicles catching on in the areas where you have your stores?

JEST SIDLOSKI: So, Alberta unlike, again, the bigger provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and BC, we don't have any electric vehicle rebates and neither does Saskatchewan and neither does Manitoba and this is where the majority of our stores are, so, electric vehicle adoption in our area isn't as fast as it is elsewhere in Canada.

AMT: Okay. But you obviously see a future in this.

JEST SIDLOSKI: Yeah. I mean, every day we're getting pictures sent in of electric vehicles charging at our stores and in small town Alberta, and small town Saskatchewan and it's growing rapidly. Every week we know more people are charging at our stores and those people are coming into our stores to shop. So, it is definitely growing and like elsewhere in the country, there were lineups at the Calgary Tesla Centre, so there's going to be a whole slew of electric vehicles on the road like we've never seen before.

AMT: Okay, Jest, thanks for talking to us.

JEST SIDLOSKI: Thank you.

AMT: That is Jest Sidloski, Director of Peavey Mart. That’s based Red Deer Alberta. Peter Cheney, we've heard the federal government is investing in this type of infrastructure. In the long run, will users be expected to pay for these charges?

JEST SIDLOSKI: Well, ultimately, they will. It's kind of a teaser rate right now. When you buy a Tesla you get free charging with it on the superchargers. And I must note, by the way, that when my wife and I drove the west coast we ended buying at least two new pairs of shoes and several shirts and a sweater because the charging points are always near a shopping centre. And so that's the great come on. So right now, it's a bit of a teaser rate. You get free charging, but, ultimately, yes, people will end up paying, but charging a car is cheaper than buying gas. When you figured it all out, fueling an electric car costs 30 percent of what it costs to power one with gasoline.

AMT: And so besides more charging stations, what else has to happen in infrastructure?

PV: Well, charging points are really what it's about, but there's a great technological shakeout too. It’s a VHS and BETA situation. So, a lot of the big manufacturers are betting that fuel cells will win and not batteries. Elon Musk believes in the battery. He calls the fuel cell the ‘fool’s cell.’ So, a fuel cell also powers an electric car but it makes its power by converting hydrogen to electricity. I personally believe the battery is a better technology for right now because electricity is everywhere, hydrogen is not. So the infrastructure will come when the technology is finally settled upon, whether it's batteries or the fuel cell. But we definitely need more infrastructure and it will need federal funding.

AMT: And how long can you go on a charge on?

PETER CHENEY: Well, a Tesla Model S, if the weather is warm, you can probably do 225 miles at most. If the weather's cold, your range will be reduced. If you drive aggressively, the range will be reduced, if there's a grade, but about 225 miles. That’s about as good as it gets right now. And most of the other electric cars do far less.

AMT: And you have written that, in fact, at some point we may see, like, whole batteries, actually, just put in a new battery, if you need to charge right away.

PETER CHENEY: Yeah, and that's one of the great technological shakeouts. The Model S has battery swap capability. You can drop the battery out of the car, put it a new one in 90 seconds and that's a promising avenue to take because then you get rid of the weight, and, of course, buying the shoes while you're at the shopping centre. But that is a promising technology that may be the answer, but, again, it's VHS and BETA. We're waiting to see which one is going to win.

AMT: Okay. And that I guess depends on who's buying what down the road too.

PETER CHENEY: Yeah. It's still early days. You have these early adopters who've invested in Tesla. I met some really interesting people who own Teslas up on the west coast. One of them was an engineer. He was a very wealthy guy. He made a lot of money because he's really smart. He converts factories to make them more energy efficient. He owns three Teslas and he has a house covered solar panels. He doesn't consume any energy. But how many people could afford this? He was like a real life Tony Stark Iron Man. Not many people could afford the upfront investment that he had made in his home and his cars. We need to make this more affordable and accessible.

AMT: And, of course, if we're talking about green energy, not every province has electricity that is made with green, quote-unquote, fossil fuels. They're making their own electricity with coal, so you might be defeating the purpose depending on where you live.

PETER CHENEY: Exactly. Now we're talking well to wheels efficiency and greenness. So in some places electricity is dirty. It's still cleaner than burning gasoline when you factor it all in. But, ideally, you make your power with renewables, like solar or wind, tide energy, and put it in the car and you have almost zero emissions. There's only the transmission losses, but it's still cleaner.

AMT: And let's talk about the batteries though because the biggest barrier can be the fear that the battery will die before you get to the destination. We’ve got a story from Dan Argiros in Toronto. He was one of the first Tesla owners in Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

The first few months were interesting because I suffered, what a lot of people call, range anxiety. You know, I was worried, how far would the car go? How long would the charge last? But I quickly became accustomed to having a fully charged car all the time. The building I work in has a number of free charging stations. I put a charging port in my driveway, in my garage, at my cottage. So you learn to deal with the fact that you can't just charge your car as easily as you can buy gas. Now, not everyone is as disciplined as me. My son, who is going to hate me for saying this, one day he said, Dad, can I bring the Tesla up to the cottage again? So I said, Okay, no problem, but make sure you charge the car fully before you leave or stop in Barrie. There’s a Tesla charging station in Barrie and you can fill up for free. So he and his friend drive up, but, of course, they think they have enough charge to get to the cottage. So, about 30 kilometres from our cottage on a very dark, country road I get this phone call. And this panicked voice says, Dad, I only have thirty kilometres of range to get to the cottage and I don't think I'm going to make it. So, obviously, he didn't do all the things a dad would do and he rolled down our driveway with less than one kilometre of range to go. So, I think he's learned his lesson.

AMT: Okay. So that's Dan Argiros in Toronto Peter Cheney, range anxiety, a new phrase.

PETER CHENEY: Yes.

AMT: Having range anxiety.

PETER CHENEY: Oh, I have experienced it. So, years ago, I was test driving a Mini Model E, Electric E, and I had real range anxiety. I was trying to go to a hockey banquet and I could see the range metre dropping. It's awful. It's like being the bomber pilot coming back from the raid on Berlin and waiting for the white cliffs of Dove. You just don’t know if you're going to make it, if one of the engines is going to conk out. And, so, one of the great impediments to the adoption electric cars is the impatience of teenage boys, as we've heard from Dan, because they don't have the sort of patience to stop and charge when they know they should.

AMT: Also being stuck in traffic, I guess. Just like, if you think you've got so much and then you get stuck in traffic, you might have a problem.

PETER CHENEY: Oh, yeah. Well, even with the Tesla there was one leg of my trip where I miscalculated. I was going up to Mount Shasta and I didn't realize how much grade would be involved and I elected not to go with a 100 percent charge, I went with about 65 percent to save time and partway into the trip I realized that I might not make it. And I aborted and turned around. So range anxiety is real and the owners to gas powered cars aren't accustomed to it, but when you drive an electric car you start thinking more about where the power comes from and where you're going to get it next.

AMT: Peter Cheney—I am speaking to Peter Cheney. He is the National Driving columnist with The Globe and Mail. You used to be an investigative reporter covering all sorts of political stories, war stories, but you began your career as a mechanic, am I right?

PETER CHENEY: Well, I actually went to university to be a writer and I couldn't see how I was going to make a living and I quit. And I got a job in a Porsche Volkswagen shop, because I had always admired mechanics. To me, it was sacred. It was like da Vinci. I didn't think of mechanics as grease-stained wretches. I thought of them as brilliant people who could fix machinery that you needed. So I actually trained as a Porsche Volkswagen mechanic. I spent four years there and then I went back to school, took journalism, got a job in a newspaper, and I'm still -there. So I'm kind of a weird hybrid.

AMT: But you would have—Well, speaking of hybrids and full electric—But, so, you would have empathy for mechanics. What will a proliferation of electric cars do to the traditional auto industry and auto repair industry?

PETER CHENEY: Well a little decimated actually. And one of the reasons-- I left the mechanic industry for a lot for a lot of reasons. I really did want to be a writer, but I also knew that the industry would come under assault. I knew that the manufacturers would take away the repair business from the independents, which has largely happened. And now the EV will vastly reduce the amount of maintenance required for a car. We've seen this going on for a while now. I used to make my living by adjusting the valves on a Porsche 911 and changing oil. And all that's going to go away, because an electric car needs much less maintenance. You'll see a wholesale shift. It’ll be a major technological disruption, much like the one that you’ve seen in – what Google did to the Yellow Pages, for example. So that industry will be changed and decimated.

AMT: Won’t you still need upkeep of an electric car though?

PETER CHENEY: Yes, but much less and most of it will come from the manufacturer. So, you’ve still got lubrication point on the suspension, you’ve still got to align the wheels, but a lot the repairs on internal combustion come from renewables, like the exhaust system, the starter motor, the alternator, the oil change. All those are gone. So an electric motor is much, much simpler. It really only has two main bearings. There’s a shaft that spins. It doesn't reciprocate. An internal combustion engine is always destroying itself. It's a reciprocating device. Each piston has to go up and down millions and millions of times every day. And that wears out. An electric car is much smoother. There's no reciprocation, so the maintenance is much less too.

AMT: Okay. So, the whole industry has reasons to be worried.

PETER CHENEY: Absolutely.

AMT: I want to bring in one other person. Alex Louis is the Vice President of Sales at Quebec City-based Add Energie. His company installs charging stations across Canada. It also focusses on installing electric car chargers in large apartment and condo complexes. And Alex Louis is in Vancouver today. Hello.

ALEX LOUIS: Thank you for having me.

AMT: Why is it important to have the chargers where people live in their apartments and condo complexes?

ALEX LOUIS: Well, actually, this where what we call primary charging, so it is the first place where people are going to charge their vehicle. So, as people own electric vehicle, every day that they are leaving they’re home, they’re on a full charge. And then after they can complement the charging with secondary charging at fast chargers or level two chargers that you’ll see everywhere – at the workplace, at public sites. So, for us, [indecipherable] about creating a charging ecosystem around EV drivers.

AMT: And you are you working with developers making new buildings? Are you working with people who have existing buildings? Like, who's got the foresight to start putting these in?

ALEX LOUIS: Both. I'd say, obviously, for retrofit applications for an existing building a lot of times the building wasn’t designed to accommodate the addition of charging stations. So that's why smart charging becomes really important, but I'd say, you know, it's really 50/50. But I can really feel, we can really feel at Add Energie a lot of growth, a lot of developers on new constructions that are willing to add charging stations to provide added value service.

AMT: Who pays for the installation?

ALEX LOUIS: It’s the developers. Most of the time, it’s the developer that would pay for the installation.

AMT: And how would you describe the state of electric car infrastructure in Canada right now?

ALEX LOUIS: It’s growing really fast. You know, when people don't own electric vehicles, they don't tend to see the charging stations, but I can tell you at Add Energie we've seen-- We have over 2,000 charging stations here in Canada. There’s other manufacturers that have charging stations as well. There's roughly 20,000 charging stations, but there's more than 12,000 charging stations across the country. So, yeah, I’d say there’s a lot to be done, but we've seen a lot of momentum across the country. Just in Ontario there's a new program that was launched to add that charging infrastructure. And it's all about, you know, seeing this as an ecosystem of charging. So what I mean by that is every charging station is important. At home it’s important, but also the secondary charging. So as you'll see in the next few months, Ontario has some initiatives. Here in Vancouver, the network is going rapidly and, you know, for us a Canadian energy company, we really want to, kind of, connect Canada from coast to coast and we’re really near that objective.

AMT: What level are your chargers?

ALEX LOUIS: Well, we have both level two and fast chargers. We have over 35 fast chargers around the country. Obviously, most of them right now are in Quebec and in Ontario we have plans to deploy over 35 more within the next six months and the goal is to have around 200 fast chargers within the next 24 months. So it goes really fast.

AMT: Okay. Alex Louis, thanks for your thoughts on this.

ALEX LOUIS: Thank you.

AMT: Alex Louis is the Vice President of Sales at Add Energie. It’s based in Quebec City. He joined us from Vancouver. So, you’re seeing this unfold, I guess, Peter?

PETER CHENEY: Well, again, chicken and egg. The more charges you have the more likely people are to buy an electric car. I have thought about buying a Tesla myself and using it as my only car, but there are still some holdbacks, because if you want to go see your aunt in New Brunswick, for example, you're going to run into some stretches where there are no charge points. You might end up in a KOA campground plugging into an RV charger. You might end up at the shopping mall. There's 100,000 gas stations in North America, but there's only about 150 Tesla superchargers, and that's growing. So at this point you're still a bit of an early adopter, but we can see that we're reaching a tipping point now. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting there.

AMT: And, again, you know, we have so many vast, open spaces in Canada. You really do need them lots of places if you’re a driver.

PETER CHENEY: Exactly.

AMT: If you really like getting out there or need to get out there, even for work and things.

PETER CHENEY: Yeah. If you want to drive to Winnipeg, for example, are you going to be able to do it fast chargers? I'm not sure what the current state of the charging network is, but you might. But once you go north of Winnipeg, then you're on your own.

AMT: If you look ahead ten years, what percentage of cars do you think will be electric in Canada?

PETER CHENEY: I want to be careful with my predictions because I don't want to be wrong, but it’ll be higher than it is today. Elon Musk thinks that by 2020 the majority of cars will be self-driving. I think that's a little optimistic. But I think we might see 15 percent, 20 percent at that point.

AMT: The self-driving cars, would they be electric as well?

PETER CHENEY: Yes. Electric is better for a self-driving car because the control system is simpler. Internal combustion motor is actually a complex device, because produces power to very narrow range. That’s why we have a transmission, for example. So the control system in an electric car is much, much simpler, so it will work better in an EV or automated car.

AMT: So, if you were walking into the boardroom of one of the big three automakers today, what would you tell them?

PETER CHENEY: I’d say, well, you're late to the game. This little upstart company's got the mojo now. What are you going to do about it? Because there's clearly a growing demand for this. People, like my son, talk about Tesla, not General Motors, and Ford, because they like these cars. They're interested in them. They're not interested in the old school stuff and the mainstream manufacturers are still associated with old school technology. They make great stuff. Today's cars are better than ever. But the future is going to be alternative power.

AMT: So the ripple effect and the domino effect of this is huge.

PETER CHENEY: Yes. Absolutely.

AMT: Peter Cheney, thanks for coming in.

PETER CHENEY: You’re welcome.

AMT: Peter Cheney, National Driving columnist with The Globe and Mail. He’s with me in our Toronto studio. And you can find out more about Canada's electric car industry tonight on CBC Radio One on The World at 6 and on CBC Television’s The National. Reporter Margo McDiarmid has a couple of stories running tonight. Listen and watch for her. And we want to hear from you on this. Have you made the move to electric? Are you considering it? Why, why not? We're on Facebook. We’re on Twitter, @TheCurrentCBC. You can send us an email by going to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. That's our program for today. We started today's show by talking about the suicide crisis currently gripping Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario. Let's end with some music that was inspired by the place. Canadian rockers The Tragically Hip wrote this song after visiting the area for a concert and included it on their 2012 album, Now for Plan A. Here is The Tragically Hip with Goodnight Attawapiskat. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Music: Goodnight Attawapiskat by The Tragically Hip]

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Apr. 12, 2016 Episode Transcript

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