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The Current Transcript for May 17, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Next time you go to your local coffee shop and you get served by a Sri Lankan person or a Filipino person they want you to know how they ended up there and who they left behind and what’s their journey.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Their experiences may be different, but they are united by the colour of their skin: Brown. They are identified with transient labour across the Globe, billions of people whose struggles and successes shape this era, and, says author Kamal Al-Solaylee, neither wealth nor education can adequately shield those with Brown skin from the judgements of others no matter where they live. In an hour, Kamal Al-Solaylee explores what being Brown in today's world really means to everyone. Also today, when's the last time you used a map?

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YODA: In 100 yards turn right. Your destiny, it is. Feel the force now? Do you? Hmm?

AMT: The GPS is so ubiquitous it even comes in a Star Wars version, but even a Jedi Master cannot guarantee you won't be led astray. As we embrace ever-more powerful satellite technology we may be neglecting an important part of our own brains. Our project Ripple Effect explores the unintended consequences of an improving technology, in half an hour. And…

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It has been proven that for a society to be prosperous and to be healthy men and women must be treated as equals. And women not only have to contribute, but they have to have the opportunity to succeed and to participate fully.

AMT: Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau's own attempts to participate fully have raised lots of hackles and a few new questions. What is the role of the Prime Minister's spouse in Canada? Should it evolve? We have a long history in Canada of judging or ignoring the spouses of our Prime Ministers. In a moment, the divisions over Sophie's choices. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Sophie Grégoire Trudeau's request for more staff sparks debate over role of PM's spouse

Guests: Robyn Urback, Supriya Dwivedi, Clare Beckton

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How do I think I will define my role as a Prime Ministers wife? First of all, we have to change that title. [Laughs] I don't think of how I will define my position. What I know is that I'm here to serve and I want to make a difference. So, all the causes that have been so close to my heart and that I've been pushing for, before I met my husband, have only grown with the more platform that I've been getting so I can help more people. So for me, it's an amazing opportunity. The critiques, the negative things that can be said, I thought they would affect me more. They don't.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau speaking to Chatelaine earlier this Spring. Flash forward a few weeks and the question of what role the Prime Minister’s wife should play and on whose dime has become an intense debate on Parliament Hill and beyond – on social and traditional media both in Canada and around the world. It started when Ms. Grégoire Trudeau, a mother of three young children, told Quebec's Le Soleil newspaper that she felt overwhelmed by the demands on her time and would like extra help to keep up with the requests from charities to speak in support their causes. The Prime Minister's Office said it would consider her request and the opposition parties were quick to weigh in.

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Statements like that really speak to a disconnect. The focus should be on what Canadian women face on a daily basis and how the federal government can support Canadian women.

AMT: That is DP MP Niki Ashton speaking on Parliament Hill last week. The controversy has clearly hit a nerve, with many Canadians tweeting, posting, video-blogging both in favour and against Ms. Grégoire Trudeau’s vision for herself as a public figure. So, what do we expect from the spouse of a Prime Minister? I am joined by two political watchers who have their own ideas. Robyn Urback is a columnist with the National Post. Supriya Dwivedi is a frequent political commenter and a consultant with Upstream Strategy Group. They are both with me in Toronto. Hello and welcome.

ROBYN URBACK: Good morning.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Thank you for having us.

AMT: Well, Robyn, let’s start with you. Why all the controversy?

ROBYN URBACK: Well, I think part of it is no matter what the Trudeaus do at this point, everybody is so interested in what’s going on in their lives. And let’s face it. These aren’t just politicians. These are celebrities. We sort of eat up whatever they’re saying to whatever media. We watch them as they travel to New York or they meet the President in Washington. We like to see what Sophie’s wearing and what pictures Justin Trudeau is taking with fans and what have you. So, I think, whatever happens there’s going to be that public appetite to sort of respond. And I think this is another example of something seems to have been said somewhat off the cuff and people just king of jump on it.

AMT: And what do you think was wrong with what she said about needing extra help?

ROBYN URBACK: Right. Well, I definitely do not begrudge her needing extra help. I think most women in Canada can probably relate to that feeling of being overwhelmed. Perhaps, not to the same extent, of course, but I think the fact that she is saying that she is overwhelmed by requests is something that is perfectly understandable. I think the question is whether the extra help should be something that’s offered from the tax payer or whether it’s something that she should, you know, provide for herself from her own family or, perhaps, from the Liberal Party instead of the general tax payer.

AMT: Supriya Dwivedi, what do you make the backlash to what Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has said?

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: I mean, I think it was to be expected. I agree with Robyn. I don’t think there’s anything that the Trudeaus can do, at this point that’s not going to -- not some sort of kerfuffle will then ensue, whether it’s good or bad. And in this case, I think it was a little bit politically naïve, at least from Mrs. Trudeau, to have said something and not have expected some sort of backlash, because I think there is this undercurrent of feeling that because the Trudeaus come from a family of privilege on both sides that they should perhaps be paying for it themselves, whether it was the nanny kerfuffle that happened a few months ago or whether it’s this. But I do think that, you know, at the end of the day, if she’s getting 50 to 60 requests per week, which is what the PMO is saying, then I don’t think she should be compared to your average Canadian woman, but rather she should be compared to other political spouses and spouses of the Prime Ministers in the past.

AMT: There’s a hashtag, #PrayForSophie, it’s taken off. Users are offering mock empathy. Somebody’s put her head on Evita. There’s a row of Disney princesses. Somebody’s offering to send her a crockpot to help ease her load. Is this politics or is this personal?

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: I mean, I think this is absolutely personal. But I think, to a degree, all politics is a little bit personal. I think, though, we’re seeing it delve into a level of child—like, it’s just like children bickering and I now feel like we’re delving into cyber bullying territory if we’re making fun of her with the hashtag and really begrudging her for simply asking for what most women need to ask for, which is more help, with three young kids, all under the age of ten.

AMT: Robyn?

ROBYN URBACK: I agree, actually. And I think it’s particularly childish. I don’t really see what’s being accomplished by this. I think there has been such a strong reaction based on, sort of what Supriya said, about that idea of a family coming from privilege. What came to my mind initially, when I read this report in Le Soleil, was that, I recall during the election campaign, Justin Trudeau made sort of a big deal about the fact that his government would be looking out for middle class families and he made a point of saying that when he receives his universal childcare benefit cheque that he would donate that cheque to charity because families like him don’t need the support. So, I think the irony here is comparing that message, before the election, to what we’re hearing now, which is, well, actually, maybe families like mine do need the help. And I think that juxtaposition or that irony is where this reaction is coming from.

AMT: The timing as well, huh. This was said right at the time of the Fort Mac fire, is when you saw a lot of families out of their homes.

ROBYN URBACK: Absolutely.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Right. I mean, she did say it on the other side of the country. It was to a Quebec City paper, but, still, yes. I agree. That definitely had – at least played a role, I would think, on social media.

AMT: She’s very prominent in the media. She poses for photo shoots, she’s comfortable in front of the camera, she had a career in front of the camera at one point. Does that make some Canadians uncomfortable as the wife of the Prime Minister, do you think?

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: No, I don’t think so. I may be a little bit biased just because I am from Quebec. I remember her as a media personality in her own right. I would think, though, that makes her prime material to be a spokesperson for multiple charities and that’s why she’s probably getting so many requests, because she’s comfortable in front of a camera and because she has so many causes for herself, such as eating disorders and girl’s empowerment, generally, that are so near and dear to her heart that she wants to foster those causes.

AMT: So, Robyn, this starts a conversation about what the wife of the Prime Minister, what her role should be. Where do you think that should go?

ROBYN URBACK: Well, I mean, right now, when we talk about the First Lady of Canada, it’s a bit of a misnomer. We don’t really have a First Lady of Canada. There is no office of the First Lady. And the question of whether we have one is an interesting one. Of course, it’s one that we’ve been talking about over the last couple of days. What strikes me is that if we did create some sort of office of the wife or perhaps the husband of the Prime Minister, eventually, we would sort of be creating this office that doesn’t really have a role in government, but also at the same time, has a rather prominent ceremonial role. It would be a bit of an anomaly, I think, in Canada.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Would it, though, as a constitutional monarchy? I mean, our head of state is the Governor General, right.

ROBYN URBACK: That is true, but at there’s some function of the Governor General—

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Fair, fair.

ROBYN URBACK: --whereas the spouse of the Prime Minister really wouldn’t have a function. The other thing that sort of makes me uncomfortable is that the price of admission into that office would basically be based on who you’re married to. So, we talked a lot, for example, last summer, about senate appointments and we talked about unelected senators and all of these entitlements and the fact that they had all of these expense accounts and what have you made available to them and they were unelected. But at least when it comes to senators we consider their past history, their record, their reputation, what region they come from. If we were to create an office of the spouse of the Prime Minister, it would be based solely on who he or she is married to and I’m not sure that I’m particularly comfortable defining a role based primarily around that.

AMT: Supriya, what do you think?

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Yeah, I think that’s a fair concern, but what I would say to that question is, I think the role of the spouse of the Prime Minister should be whatever that spouse wants it to be. And if we don’t have a codified, you know, “First Lady” in our books, then I think whether you’re Mrs. Mulroney or whether you’re Mrs. Trudeau I think you make that role to what you want it to be. And if you want to have a more active role doing some work that you think is worthy, then I think you should go ahead and do it. And if you don’t and you just want to be on the side lines and take care of your family, like many other women choose to do, I think that would be cool too. I just think, you know, it is 2016, so you should be able choose your role and figure out for yourself what is best for you and your family.

AMT: Would we be having this conversation if the PM’s spouse was a man.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: No. I really don’t think so. I really, really don’t think so. If the PM’s spouse was a man, we would accept the fact that he would need to do something with his time. A lot of the undercurrent that a spouse should be seen and not heard wouldn’t necessarily be coming into the fray. I do think the tax payer stuff would likely still be an issue, but I don’t think that sort of, you know, the #PrayForSophie hashtag that you mentioned earlier, I don’t think it would have the same sort of malicious undercurrent, let’s say.

AMT: Robyn, what do you think?

ROBYN URBACK: I agree, actually. I don’t think it would be quite so malicious, actually. I think that was a good word for it. I think we would still certainly be having the discussion. I don’t think, for example, Supriya mentioned Nannygate – a few months ago or maybe it was closer to the beginning of Justin Trudeau’s tenure. I don’t think we’d be having that discussion if Sophie Trudeau were the Prime Minister and Justin Trudeau was the spouse of the Prime Minister. I don’t think we’d be having that discussion.

AMT: No. We’d be saying, what a great dad.

BOTH: Exactly.

AMT: Look at him, he helps the nannies. And we wouldn’t be talking about his fashion sense.

ROBYN URBACK: Right. Or maybe we would. We still talk about Justin Trudeau’s socks every now and again, so.

AMT: That’s true, but it’s more limited. So, the opposition says this conversation is a distraction from the real needs of tax payers. Do they have a point?

ROBYN URBACK: I think so, actually. I mean, the thing about these sorts of stories is they’re very easy to digest and they’re good talkers and a lot of people have an opinion on them because they’re easy to relate to. I think, every woman and every man in Canada can relate to that feeling of being overwhelmed and I think, perhaps, there’s that element of jealousy. When you think—Well, myself, I don’t the option of having a second assistant paid for by the tax payer. So, I think, it is a distraction from some of the larger issues. Whether or not Sophie Grégoire Trudeau gets another assistant, it’s not really going to matter all that much. We’re not going to spiral into deficit because we’re paying for another person. I think the issue is one of entitlement. I think that’s what has become the primary issue at the core of this and I think, for some people, it’s reminiscent of the Liberal Party that we saw ten or 15 years ago that people are wary of seeing again.

AMT: What do you think?

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Yeah. I mean, I don’t disagree with that. The one thing that I will say is that when we’re talking about entitlements and when we’re talking about the needs of everyday Canadians, I think that’s a bit of a false comparison and it’s a false equivalency and, to a degree, a bit of populism to try and say that the Prime Minister’s spouse would have the same everyday jobs as an everyday Canadian. I just don’t think that’s true and we have to recognize that the role of the spouse of the Prime Minister is unique and they do have certain demands that you, I, or Robyn just don’t face.

AMT: And so even politicians at that level want us to think that they’re just like us, but they’re not actually.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Yeah.

AMT: Okay. Thanks for coming in both of you.

SUPRIYA DWIVEDI: Thanks for having us.

ROBYN URBACK: Thanks.

AMT: Robyn Urback, columnist with the National Post. Supriya Dwivedi is a frequent political commentator and a consultant with Upstream Strategy Group. They were both with me in Toronto. Well, for more on the official role on the Prime Minister’s spouse and how it’s changed and developed through the years I'm joined by Clare Beckton. She is the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership at Carleton University. She's also a former senior executive in the federal government. And Clare Beckton is in Ottawa. Hello.

CLARE BECKTON: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: The role of the spouse of the Prime Minister is a bit of a free for all, isn’t it? It changes depending on who’s in there.

CLARE BECKTON: Yes, that’s been the history of the spouses of the Prime Minister, who have all to date been women. It has very much depended on who the Prime Minister is and what role the wife has wished to play.

AMT: How is that different from the role of the spouse of the Governor General?

CLARE BECKTON: Well, the role of the spouse of the Governor General—The Governor General, as you know, represents the monarch in Canada, and therefore the spouse has a defined role. The spouse, whether it’s man or a woman, is expected to appear at some of the formal events, the state dinners, et cetera. So, it’s much easier because they have the assistance and they have the defined role.

AMT: And how does the role of the wife of the Prime Minister compare to what's expected of the First Lady in the US?

CLARE BECKTON: Again, I think the equivalent of the First Lady is more like the Governor General’s spouse with added responsibilities, because the American people very much want their First Lady to be involved. They usually have some sort of policy agenda. And First Ladies have had up to 40 or 50 assistants in their office. They are given an office and they are given assistance. Of course, the American president is also the Head of State, unlike our Prime Minister.

AMT: And, of course, First Ladies in the United States are not immune to the same kind of criticism. Hilary Clinton was criticized for getting involved in policy. Nancy Reagan was ridiculed for her ‘Just Say No’ against drugs. Michelle Obama has been criticized for her roles.

CLARE BECKTON: Yes. Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any spouse that’s been able to do it absolutely right in public’s opinion. There’s always going to be those who criticize and it’s generally been aimed at women, because, of course, in the United States there has not been a female president and we had one short-term female Prime Minister in Canada and she did not have spouse at the time.

AMT: You know, it’s interesting how we in the media treat the spouses of the Prime Ministers too. We leave them alone if they want to be left alone.

CLARE BECKTON: Yes, I think unless for some reason they put themselves in the spotlight, they tend to be left alone, but then if they step forward and do anything, there’s always those that will find something wrong with it and something positive with it.

AMT: And so do you see any parallels to what Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is saying to any other spouses of Canadian Prime Ministers?

CLARE BECKTON: Well, I think that her mother-in-law faced similar challenges when she married Pierre Trudeau. She was a young woman. She had no idea how to carry on the role at the time and she was very much a celebrity in her own right. If you think back to Maureen McTeer, she was roundly criticized for keeping her own name at the time and also for keeping her career, because she was one of the only wives of Prime Ministers who kept her career while he was in power. That was Joe Clark’s spouse.

AMT: That’s right. And you know, actually, when Laureen Harper was moving into 24 Sussex she was Laureen Teskey. She changed it, like, Harper became the more common usage.

CLARE BECKTON: Absolutely. And she was very much involved in charitable work as well with the Human Society, Animal Welfare, and a number of other causes, and she was not criticized as much as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau.

AMT: Did she have anyone as staff?

CLARE BECKTON: That I do not know because it was never publicly discussed, so I can’t say whether she did or not. I’m sure she did, because she was involved in a lot of particular charities.

AMT: Mila Mulroney actually moved into the Langevin Block and the PMO with an office.

CLARE BECKTON: Yes, and she was also involved with Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and other children’s charities. If you look back, she was also roundly criticized for her spending habits.

AMT: And Aline Chrétien? Sheila Martin?

CLARE BECKTON: They tended to take a more low key role than some of the other wives of Prime Ministers, although Aline Chrétien was a powerful advisor to her husband. When you look at some of the spouses, they have been very active on the campaign trail for their spouses as well.

AMT: What do you think - does the role need to be defined?

CLARE BECKTON: I think it would be helpful for the spouse of a Prime Minister to have a general idea of what is expected of them when their spouse comes into power. It would make it less likely that they would be criticized with respect to have some staff, et cetera, because right now there is no defined role. It is left up to the individuals in power. And as we can see, it lends itself to the kind of criticisms that are happening in this case.

AMT: And, so, what would you like to see? An actual office and staff that’s assigned and that everybody knows is there, so that it doesn’t become a partisan issue?

CLARE BECKTON: I think it should be recognized that the spouse of the Prime Minister will have requests because, of course, if you’re a charity and you can get the spouse of a profile figure, such as a rime Minister, to lend their name to your cause, it will certainly bring more resources and attention to your cause. So, I think it would be helpful to have that recognition, whether it was one or two staff that would be made available should the spouse decide to use it. I don’t think we should force spouses of Prime Ministers to actually take roles that they not be comfortable with.

AMT: And, so, if you were advising Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, what would you tell her?

CLARE BECKTON: Well, I think, at the moment, I would just say, carry on and do what you’re doing because that’s what’s near and dear to your heart and let the controversy die.

AMT: And would you give her and extra staff person?

CLARE BECKTON: I think, given the kind of challenges that she’s facing, as one of the other guests said this morning, it’s a small amount when you look at the context of what is happening in terms of dollars spent in Canada.

AMT: Clare Beckton, thanks for your thoughts.

CLARE BECKTON: You’re welcome.

AMT: Clare Beckton, founding Executive Director of the Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership at Carleton University. What do you think? We'd like to hear from you. Should there be an official role for the spouse of the Canadian Prime Minister? A more formalized job as in the United States? Should the spouse of the Prime Minister be able to define the role for herself or perhaps himself? Let us know. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Post on this story on our Facebook page. You can email us by clicking on Ccontact at cbc.ca/TheCurrent. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. You’re listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Overuse of GPS navigation shrinks part of the brain, says researcher

Guests: Roger McKinlay, Veronique Bohbot, Alexandra Samuel

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

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AMT: Still to come, from pigmentocracy to shadism, a new book explores the experiences of people with brown skin around the world. But first, in 100 metres, go left. No, right.

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[water dripping]

[wave crashing]

Ripple Effect

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[TV: The Office]

GPS: Make a right turn.

DWIGHT: Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. It’s means bear right. Right there.

MICHAEL: No. It said right. It said take a right.

DWIGHT: No, no, no, no. Look, it means go up to the right, bear right, over the bridge and hook up with 307.

GPS: Make a right turn.

MICHAEL: Maybe it’s a short cut, Dwight. It said go to the right.

DWIGHT: It can’t mean that. There’s a lake there!

MICHAEL: I think it knows where it’s going.

DWIGHT: This is the lake!

MICHAEL: The machine knows!

DWIGHT: This is the lake!

MICHAEL: Stop yelling at me!

DWIGHT: No!

MICHAEL: Stop yelling at me!

DWIGHT: There’s no road here!

[Large splash as car drives into water]

MICHAEL: Remain calm. I have trained for this.

AMT: That’s a scene from the US TV show The Office as the character Dwight Schrute tries to stop his boss from giving the GPS too much credit. That scenario of following the GPS right into the lake is not only reserved for the world of television. In fact, that very thing happened last week in Tobermory, Ontario. Here is OPP Constable Katrina Rubinstein-Gilbert describing the incident.

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She was following her GPS and was unfamiliar with the area, missing a turn. Instead of turning right, she went straight. And that short section of road leads directly onto a boat launch into Little Tub Harbour of Georgian Bay. The driver reacted quickly, rolling down her window while her car still had power, grabbing her purse, and swam back to the boat launch.

AMT: Well, police say the woman who drove into Georgian Bay is fine. She is a bit embarrassed. GPS mishaps are more common than you may think.

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NEWS ANCHOR: That's right, John. Many of us have taken a wrong turn on road trips and maybe you've blamed your GPS. Well, that's how a driver says he and his truck ended up Susquehanna River.

REPORTER: Katie Barnett came back to her Ohio home from vacation and found this:

KATIE BARNETT: I go to put my key in the lock and it doesn't work.

REPORTER: It looks like the work of robbers in a rush, but, no. This ransacked house is all thanks to a bank, whose faulty GPS navigator led it to repossess the wrong house.

KATIE BARNETT: They tell me that the GPS led them to my house.

ANCHOR: And you’re asking, how did a tractor trailer get stuck right there in the middle of the park like that? Well, the driver says it was his GPS. He was just following the directions.

AMT: Well, as part of our season-long series Ripple Effect we are looking at the unintended consequences of our growing dependence on the global positioning system. Because using GPS could have some surprising and even worrisome consequences for our brains. My first guest studies how GPS has influenced our natural navigational skills. Roger McKinlay is a satellite communication and navigation consultant based in the UK. He's also former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation. We've reached him in London, England. Hello.

ROGER MCKINLAY: Hello.

AMT: Well, we've just heard some rather extreme examples of GPS gone wrong. What are you thinking as you listen to that?

ROGER MCKINLAY: Well, there are several issues tied up in that, I think. One thing we ought to remember is GPS does make mistakes. And in fact in built up areas and in cities, it can give an erroneous position. The other side to it is the little ‘turn right,’ ‘turn left’ voice we so often use in GPS, so when driving, isn't necessarily the most helpful way of using GPS.

AMT: Have you ever been led astray?

ROGER MCKINLAY: I have. I came across what is another form of error, if you like, which is nothing to do with it having the location wrong, but a map error. I was trying to find my way to a fairly remote house and in heavy rain on a dark night, I find a gate across my path way and there’s a very neat laminated notice stuck to the gate which says, “No access. GPS wrong.”

AMT: [Laughs] So, a lot of people got that GPS wrong, obviously. So let's talk more about the actual GPS. How does it work?

ROGER MCKINLAY: It's what we call a radio navigation system. And these have been around for 50 years or more. It's just that we used to use tall masts on the ground to get either a bearing or direction or a distance. And now we've put these masts in space, if you like, so they're usable the world over. And it gives a very, very accurate position. Unlike a mobile phone, you can’t get away with just seeing one signal. You need four signals to be able to navigate, which is why if you've got a very little bit of sky above you in a city, it doesn't work too well. And contrary to what a lot of people think, it doesn't just work rather poorly indoors; it doesn't work at all indoors. So, other systems are needed if you're under ground or, indeed, under the sea.

AMT: Okay. So it's a series of satellites?

ROGER MCKINLAY: It is. GPS is what we tend to call them all, but, in fact, that's the US military system is a global positioning system and those satellites have been up there for 30 years, some of them. But there is also European system called Galileo. There's an Indian system. There’s a Chinese system. There’s a Russian system. And, collectively, we tend to call them global navigation satellite systems. So there’s a big choice of satellites. It’s all very sensible. They tend to be interoperable. And it's because you can see so many satellites from one location now that the system is almost mesmeric in its accuracy. It never seems to put a foot wrong. But it frequently does.

AMT: Other than not being there any good to us underground, what are its main weaknesses as a system?

ROGER MCKINLAY: It's been likened to trying to listen to a 20-watt light bulb 20,000 kilometres away. The signals are incredibly weak. And that means they can be interfered with or obstructed. And we are seeing deliberate jamming of GNS systems now. Sometimes it's white van man who doesn't like his boss having fitted a tracker to his van. But it’s also organized crime who are using it to deceive the transponders you have fitted to expensive cars.

AMT: So, if somebody is jamming GPS in your vicinity, you'll get jammed as well?

ROGER MCKINLAY: You'll get jammed and you'll just lose the ability to get an accurate position. Your GPS may not know that. So it might just come up with some random locations, which wouldn't be very helpful.

AMT: You talk about the number of satellites up there. What's the cost in maintaining all these satellites?

ROGER MCKINLAY: It doesn’t come for free. It's only because when the technology was introduced there wasn't any means for charging the user. So, GPS and its subsequent follow on system has really been a great gift to the world by the military. And it is absolutely fantastic. But you're talking about probably billions of dollars a year to maintain these satellites and buy new ones and there's always a pipeline of new satellites being bought and then being replenished. So it certainly doesn't come for free.

AMT: It's interesting, you mention defence, because, of course, we've seen stories where GPS coordinates have been wrong and the wrong thing has been bombed in war zones.

ROGER MCKINLAY: Yes. I think there are two things at work here. One is the technology. The other is people. Navigators have a great word for this. They talk about accuracy being of something isn't as precise as you’d like. And they talk about blunders. And blunders have been made ever since time began. It's like reading the wrong end of your compass needle or having a map upside down.

AMT: Are there were efforts underway to improve the weaknesses in the system as it is?

ROGER MCKINLAY: Yes, is the answer. Every satellite which is launched is smarter. The accuracy is improved over the years. In good clear conditions without buildings around, you could easily get three metres of accuracy. In the middle of a city you could be 300 metres out. But there's a growing belief that total reliance on satellites, because of their susceptibility to jamming, is probably not the right way to go and there's a move particularly for professional navigators, for mariners, in particular, looking at backup systems, which are back to using terrestrial masts again.

AMT: Really? They're teaching that in naval colleges?

ROGER MCKINLAY: Well, there are two things being taught in naval colleges. One is that there are thoughts being put into terrestrial systems. But naval colleges are still teaching people to stand on a deck and use a sextant and take sightings of stars, which is no bad thing either.

AMT: Just in case, huh.

ROGER MCKINLAY: Well, it primes your brain to think the right way. You're not just following instructions from a machine. You're aware of what's around you. Navigation is very much dependent on being alert.

AMT: And are there things that institutions could be doing to promote or to teach navigational skills that kind of keep us primed that way?

ROGER MCKINLAY: I think education has a part to play. And I'm not saying schools don't teach navigation and map reading - many do. But I think we ought to recognise that understanding a bit of the science of navigation and understanding how our heads work in terms of being able to manipulate this information is no bad thing. We were used to, in school, still teaching sport. We still teach the arts. And we ought to regard, I think, some of the navigation skills as traditional skills, which is really worth having, because they help us think in a very clever way. And they continue, I think, an aspect of our imaginations and our creativity, our ability to process information, which we can use in all forms of life.

AMT: Roger McKinlay, thank you for speaking with me.

ROGER MCKINLAY: It's a pleasure.

AMT: Roger McKinlay, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation. He’s in London, England. Well, becoming too dependent on GPS can pose problems in navigating the world around us. And it could have an impact on our brains. Veronique Bohbot is a cognitive neuroscientist at Montreal's Douglas Hospital and McGill University. She studies how the brain uses memory for navigation. Today, we have reached her in Trondheim, Norway. Hello.

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: Hi.

AMT: You just heard Roger McKinlay. What do you think of what he says about our dependence on GPS.

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: Well, I thought there were very interesting points that were raised, including the fact that we've become dependent on the GPS. And that was precisely one of the points that I noted - if we become dependent on it, it's proof we're not using a part of the brain involved in healthy cognition called hippocampus.

AMT: Maybe you can give us a crash course in the neuroscience of navigation then. Talk to me a little bit more about the hippocampus and what gets used if that's not being used.

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: When people look around the environment, look at landmarks and try to memorize their location and the relationship between these landmarks. When we navigate, we then have the ability to make a mental map. It's called a cognitive map. And you can imagine your mind's eye the relative positions of the different places, like, where is your home relative to your work, where it is relative to your grocery store, et cetera. Then you're using the part of the brain called the hippocampus.

AMT: So, what if I'm using the GPS? What am I using in my brain?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: We haven't actually tested people on the GPS, but there’s another method that's very similar that we call stimulus response. So, what that is it's a series of action. You repeat a series of instructions. For example, when I get out of the building, turn right. When I cross the street, turn left. After the second block you're going to face the white building. Out of the white building, turn right again. So, if you're following the series of instructions in a way that you cannot build a bird's eye view. You don't know the relationship between the landmarks. You just know the series of left and right turns. So it's called stimulus response because your white building becomes your stimulus. The response is the behaviour, the action you will take when you're faced with that stimulus. So that strategy relies on a different part of the brain. And that part of the brain is part of the striatum.

AMT: If that part of our brain is being used in that way, what's happening to our hippocampus?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: That's an excellent question. So what we find is that with normal aging people who will use the stimulus response strategy, which is a more GPS-like, actually, they have a strong hippocampus poorer overall cognition, which means that they're at risk of having a Alzheimer’s disease. So the link hasn't been established yet, because we would need many years to establish the link between GPS use, the response strategy, and Alzheimer's disease. But the little elements are each there in the sense that using the response strategy is associated with a shrunk hippocampus. And other studies, other scientists have already measured that a strong hippocampus is a predictor of future diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

AMT: Okay. Alzheimer’s or other neurological diseases?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: That’s right. So that would be for ageing. And then in young adults it's been shown that a strong hippocampus is found, for example, in people who are at risk of depression or people at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. And then areas neighbouring the hippocampus are also posing a risk for schizophrenia.

AMT: And I know you're just raising these links. You're not saying one directly leads to the other, but you talking about the links. So am I understanding correctly? You're saying that when we navigate on our own we're exercising our hippocampus and when we are using other stimulus, like a GPS, our hippocampus isn't getting that exercise.

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: That's exactly true, yes.

AMT: And yet you're suggesting that over time that's not a good idea. We need to keep exercising our hippocampus?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: Absolutely. I even developed programs to exercise people’s hippocampus.

AMT: Okay. Because it has to do with our imagination and creativity as well, does it not?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: So, we believe that it does. We haven't measured it. We're actually running some studies right now to measure it. Although, there have been—Actually, come to think of it. There has been some publications showing that patients with brain damage to the hippocampus can't imagine what we can use with a certain tools, like a paper clip or a cardboard box. So, while a healthy control can think of 40 different ways of using a box, a patient with brain damage to the hippocampus can't think of more than three or four ways.

AMT: So is it possible to find new ways to exercise our hippocampus?

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: Well, absolutely. I usually make suggestions. And I'm the one who actually came up with the suggestion to turn off your GPS on the way back. So, of course, we're going to use our technology. It's there and it's very useful for us. So how do we use it now in a healthy way? Well, the best suggestion, of course, is use your brain. Use your own internal GPS. But if you're going to use the technology, then use it to learn about your environment. Don't use it to become dependent. So if you find that you feel you need it more and more and that you feel more and more lost, it's a sign that you're not using your brain enough and, specifically, your hippocampus. So, I would suggest to people to turn off your GPS on the way back or another suggestion would be use the kind the GPS that show the top view and then try to memorize the relationship between your start position and your target. If you can, even memorize all the different roads you have to take and then shut it off. So that when you're driving then you use your memory. Then that will stimulate your brain when you're going to be looking around for that street. You're paying attention to your environment. That's good for your hippocampus.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you for that. Thank you very much.

VERONIQUE BOHBOT: My pleasure.

AMT: Veronique Bohbot is a cognitive neuroscientist at Montreal's Douglas Hospital in McGill University. She mentioned she's developed exercises for your hippocampus and we have linked her website on ours, cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can find out more about keeping your hippocampus active. Not everyone is sounding the alarm over GPS. Alexandra Samuel is a Vancouver-based tech writer and researcher. She joins us from Vancouver. Hello.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Good morning.

AMT: I've just heard some pretty convincing reasons to be wary of overusing the GPS. What are you thinking?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, you know, to me, the question about GPS really lines up with a broader conversation around technology, I guess I would say, technology hygiene and our anxieties about how technology changes the way we think and live. And so rather than looking at GPS in isolation, I think we need to step back and ask ourselves some hard questions about where we're prepared to interrogate our use of technology and direct it towards the kind of people we want to become and where we're actually going to accept these tools and put them to good use in our lives.

AMT: Okay. So why do you think people have embraced GPS the way they have so far?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, there are lots of people who have an incredibly hard time getting from point A to point B. And I think shaming people out of using—

AMT: Out of the lake.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Yeah, exactly.

AMT: Shame them out of the lake.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Yeah. I mean, I think everyone who has used GPS probably has their stories of near misses and getting a little bit off track, but those of us who are old enough to remember the dark days before GPS can also tell you many stories about going hours out of our way and getting lost the old fashioned way. So it's easy to romanticize the past, but I don't know, personally, a whole lot of people who use sextant or know how to use a sextant.

AMT: Do you know a lot of people who use maps anymore?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: You know, it's funny, I don't, actually. And one of the things I do a lot of research around is how kids use technology. And certainly I've observed in my own family. Our kids, to the extent that our kids have learned how to use maps, they’ve learned from Google Maps. And I would actually argue that GPS can be a terrific tool for teaching navigation skills. But, again, sort of following Veronique’s lead, it's looking at the big picture of the map and using that little moving blue dot to understand the concept of what it means to follow a route.

AMT: Tell me more about what you think the benefits of GPS can be then.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, I wouldn't necessarily focus on the benefits of GPS, itself, as much as that larger question of how do we relate to technology so that we not just use it to solve our immediate problems and obviously GPS is hugely beneficial if it can help us move places faster, avoid traffic, figure out where we're going and so on, but also looking more broadly at this question of like how do we want technology to fit into our lives and where are we going to rely on it and where are we going to, god forbid, still assert some degree of human agency?

AMT: Well, talk to me a little bit more about how you think about that then. First of all, do you think people consider the risks or the unintended consequences associated with new technologies or do we just grab them and start running with them? What do we what should we be thinking about in the bigger picture?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, absolutely. And I think the way you frame it in terms of people taking what's handed to them is exactly the problem, right. So, for me, I always love to audit other people's phones, always looking at people's phones and seeing what they have on their home screen. And a lot of people have on their home screen the thing that was on their phone when they got it. And, to me, that’s a signal of-- That map app, of course, is one of the things that is on your home screen. And so we sort of take technology as it's handed to us and we use it as it unfolds instead of thinking, what is the problem I want to solve. You know, what are the parts of my brain, my social life, and so on that I want to develop? And that's particularly important in the educational context, right. So instead of just asking how do we make sure kids still know how to read maps, we need to step back and think well what are the cognitive skills our kids are actually going to need to function in the world? What are the things that we know they need to practice in order to keep their brains active? And then we can ask, what are the technologies that are going to support that? And the issue to me, in these stories about GPS, isn't really a story about the limitations of technology or about how our brains are shrinking to the size of peas. It's really a story about us needing to assert some degree of control over our technology so that when the sentient machines rise we give them a run for their money and just don’t turn over the keys.

AMT: Right. But I can't be the only one who refers to the GPS a ‘she,’ right? She told us to go this way, right.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Right.

AMT: Let’s go back to GPS for a minute. What are your GPS habits?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: My GPS habits. It's funny. I still have extremely fond memories of using paper maps in my childhood. I was an only child with a single parent and so it was my job to navigate when we went on road trips. And some people-- It'll be a good test of how old your audience is to find out how many people remember the Triptiks that the CAA used to make for you, which were like customized Google maps where somebody would assemble a map and out of a little map book and highlight your route along it and—

AMT: Busted.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Right? And it was so charming. You'd stand in line. All of these things that are unfathomable now. You’d stand in line waiting for your map book and then it was my job to follow the map. You know, what I find far more useful about location-based technology is, first of all, the traffic routing, and second of all, being able to fine points on the way.

AMT: What kind of interesting uses can you see for GPS in the future.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: The self-driving car is obviously the big one. And, again, that makes people hugely nervous and for good reason. But, let's be honest, the vast majority-- We know that cars are the leading cause of accidental death. And the vast majority of those are caused by some degree of human error. To my understanding, the self-driving cars are not relying entirely on GPS, right. They have various other technologies that help them orient and make real time decisions. And, frankly, we are very attached to our sense of control and there's a reason that a lot of people are nervous passengers, but comfortable drivers. But if we can kind of get out of our own way and develop technologies that we can trust, then I think we're in a much safer position on the road, frankly, because the cars are not going to make as many mistakes as we do.

AMT: Alexandra, thank you.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Thank you.

AMT: Alexandra Samuel is a tech writer and researcher. She joined us from Vancouver. We want to hear from you. How reliant are you on GPS? Are you afraid that you have lost your navigational skills? Has GPS ever led you astray? Come on, have you ever ended up in a lake? Let us know. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Post on this story on our Facebook page. Wmail us by clicking on 'contact' at cbc.ca/TheCurrent. I am Anna Maria Tremonti. You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: sting]

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Author Kamal Al-Solaylee on how cheap labour shapes brown racial identity

Guests: Kamal Al-Solaylee

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[TV show: Master of None]

DIRECTOR: Okay, I want to try it again, but this time we need you to do an accent.

DEV: You mean like an Indian accent?

DIRECTOR: Yeah, yeah.

DEV: You know, I'd rather not. I just feel kind of weird doing that voice. Is that okay?

DIRECTOR: You know, Ben Kingsley did an accent in Gandhi and he won the Oscar for it, so…

DEV: But he didn't win the Oscar just for doing the accent. I mean, it wasn’t an Oscar for best Indian accent. Also, might be strange to play Gandhi and talk like I’m talking now.

DIRECTOR: I would argue that the same could be said of this cab driver.

DEV: I would argue that that's kind of a weird argument to make.

DIRECTOR: Okay, we’ll be in touch.

AMT: That's Aziz Ansari from his Netflix series Master of None, taking a comedic jab at racial stereotypes and what it means to be a brown person in Hollywood. For Kamal Al-Solaylee being brown is also a defining part of his identity. He's traveled extensively to learn about the social and economic realities of being brown around the globe. His new book is called Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means to Everyone. Spanning ten countries, the book draws connections between seemingly disparate experiences of brown people, from migrant labourers on construction sites in Doha to domestic Filipino workers in Hong Kong, to Pakistani students suspected of belonging to an al-Qaeda sleeper cell in Canada. Kamal Al-Solaylee is with me in Toronto, hello.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: As you listen to that, does that resonate, that little clip at the top?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It does. There are some expectations we have to perform brown and that sometimes come across in--I mean, it's interesting that he's auditioning for a part of a cab driver, which in itself is one of the stereotypes of who does the very labour intensive work around the world, probably.

AMT: How do you define being brown?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Well, I had to do a kind of a stress test to my own thesis and my definition comes from two experiences, basically - global migration and cheap labour, so every community that I have written about has experienced one or the other or both. You can't possibly talk about the construction workers from South Asia in Qatar without discussing global migration as a whole, but also cheap labour is what brought, for example, South Asian workers to the UK after the Second World War. That’s part of the history of the large migration of South Asians to the UK was that, you know, after the Second World War, there was a demand for labour. These two were my criteria for finding brown. There's also some geographic precedence that I've used. From 19th century racialist science that has set the course for what was known as the brown race.

AMT: This is different. You talk about post Second World War, you saw a lot of European whites also migrating for cheap labour but there's something else going on here.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Right, well that there are number of things. For example, the kind of commuters you're talking about, I'm particularly thinking of Italians or Irish in North America. I reference in the book another book on wishes they worked their way to whiteness and they had, among other things, the same cultural European heritage, the light skin colour, but they also managed to move from what was then the working class into the middle class. You see that here in Canada as well as commuters get more established, they move from the downtown core and they go to the more affluent and quieter suburbs. And then a new set of immigrants come in and it's just this juncture in history we are seeing that the new set of migrants who want to do well and make their way into the world tend to come from North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America which, to me is the brown continuum.

AMT: Where did you travel to find out about the experience of being brown around the world?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I went to Trinidad, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the UK, France, Canada and the US.

AMT: And in your travels, did you find a common identity that connects people in these countries?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Context is key, so things varied from one society to another, so in Trinidad for example, the brown identity was playing out against a country that was largely black, not just in population but in the way it identifies itself for the world. When you think of Trinidad, its identity is calypso music and carnival and just strongly black identified. But in a place, for example, like the US, I felt that there were certain experiences that linked undocumented Mexican workers with Arabs and Muslims after 9/11. They were both communities that felt the sting of right wing politics and you just have to think of who did Donald Trump pick on?

AMT: Mexicans and Muslims.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Mexicans and Muslims and there are those communities that have technically nothing in common, they come worlds apart. The Mexican population is Catholic, by and large and yet, there they were, two brown faces that have become the enemy of choice for Donald Trump. He knew that he could scapegoat these two people and get away with it.

AMT: In other words, the one connecting thread is skin colour, it's not necessarily culture, it's the fact that they are not white.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: That is true but skin colour, you could also say that so how come it doesn't apply to black people? There's a certain ambivalence around brown and that probably comes from the fact that it is close enough to white but not as dark as black. I refer to the term buffer race a lot in the book and it is that group in the middle that also displays a huge range of skin tones, so no one would probably in North America would say that Arabs and Muslims are white even though some of them may pass for white. What has happened in a place like the US is that they have become browner as the post 9/11 world unfolded.

AMT: Well, let's talk about it because you start your story through the prism of your own racial identity. When did you first become aware of your racial identity?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I became aware of skin tone at a very young age because I grew up in Egypt, and even though it's sort of an Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern country, it is a country where light skin colour is highly prized and I wasn't light skinned. When I had friends, I had always envied the fact that they could pass-- like the idea of passing for white meant so much, but my awareness of racial identity probably happened when I moved to the UK when I was about 24 to study. For the first time, I was called Paki on the street, which is the slur word for a Pakistani, and it kind of stopped me because I didn't think I would be considered Pakistani because I thought I was Arab from an Arab background and I'm relatively lighter skin toned than most Bangladeshi and because Pakistan is not just about Pakistani but anyone who's who is Indian. And that's when it hit me that to a lot of the mainstream English society, I'm just a dark skinned person and I could be Bangladeshi, I could be North African, I could be Arab, it didn't matter. I just wasn't white and all of us were Pakis.

AMT: You write about something called shade-ism and being affected by shade-ism. What do you mean by that?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Well in different societies of people of colour, there is a kind of pigmentocrisy where there are people who have lighter skin tones within, say within the brown or the black colour. They tend to do better or tend to benefit from that lighter skin tone, so if you're in a job in the media or in somewhere where there's public presence, the lighter your skin tone, the more likely you'd be the face of an organization or the front of the service, whereas the darker skinned tend to be seen as less than valuable. It is part of the racism family, in a way.

AMT: Pigmentocrisy? That's a new word for me, or is that shade-ism?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: That’s shade-ism, but pigmentocrisy also refers to the ordering of society along colour lines which is a model that I talk about in the book that some US social scientists are beginning to talk about. Instead of a black and white society, it is moving to as a three-tier society of whites, honourary whites, and blacks.

AMT: So to what extent are brown people responsible for perpetuating the idea that a lighter skin a good idea?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Oh, it's a huge responsibility and this book—

AMT: Where does that come from?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It predates colonialism, but it certainly was perpetuated through colonialism and the idea that the fair English skin or the fair French skin is not only an ideal of beauty, but also an ideal of moral fortitude and bravery and courage.

AMT: Well, I want to look at a few examples of brown experiences around the world. You went to a hospitality training school in the Philippines. What did you see?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: What I saw was how young Filipino men and women are taught pretty much by the very young age that their future lies in the service industry and many of these people had no chance of good jobs in the Philippines at all. The only way out of poverty is to get a job somewhere else. It's all about working somewhere else.

AMT: And it's all about working somewhere else as serving someone?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: In the service industry.

AMT: Basically the Philippines has become a nation reliant on the remittances-- it exports labour the way some people export other material goods.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Absolutely. It's almost ten percent of the GDP and it is a very regulated industry. I mean, it's hard to meet a Filipino person who hasn't worked abroad or doesn't know someone who's worked abroad or who longs to work abroad, but it's usually in the service industries or in industries where local populations outside of the Philippines, don't want to do the job anymore. So, hotel cleaning service, or in the kitchen or, the bellhops in hotels and I refer particularly to cruise ships which are largely staffed by Filipino workers.

AMT: And of course, we know domestic workers here, nannies and personal caregivers for the elderly now.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Everywhere in the world. When I was in the Philippines and I would see a woman carrying a child that looked like her and I was actually quite surprised because I'm used to the Filipino workers looking after children that look nothing like them whether that's in Hong Kong, in Canada, or in Qatar.

AMT: If we go from the Philippines to Sri Lanka, another country where the economy relies on exporting labourers, many Sri Lankans have darker skin than people from the Philippines. How does that influence the kind of work they end up doing overseas?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Oh, it actually influences that hugely. Sri Lanka is not quite as organized as the Philippines has been. I mean for Sri Lankans, Philippines is the role model for how you handle the export of labour. But Sri Lankan domestic workers particularly tend to come from poorer and rural areas, so they're not very well educated. Sometimes they've never seen a washing machine or a dishwasher and on top of all of that, they tend to be much darker in skin and therefore less preferred in a number of settings because it would be like a hollow victory to boss around someone who is that dark, whereas to boss around a Filipino who is lighter skinned, it's some kind of moral victory.

AMT: One of the places overseas that workers from South Asia end up is Qatar. What were the conditions like at the camps you visited that housed those migrant workers?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It's probably the worst. The place where they live is largely six to eight per room in very small rooms. So, there are lineups for the kitchen, probably like 20 people lining up for one cooker. I talked to a number of people who said that they came under one contract and when they arrived in Qatar, they got something completely different. They had no resources to complain and they felt they were stuck.

AMT: We did some stories here on The Current about the migrant workers in Qatar working on venues for World Cup soccer and the exploitation of those workers.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: The incidence of heart attacks, for example, is very high because people just collapse from exhaustion or a heart attack.

AMT: You use these examples in Qatar and Doha, but these are Arab Emirates ruled by people who are brown. What are you observing there, what are you saying?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I'm seeing a number of things there. As I argue in the book, racism is a universal experience. Everybody can be racist, everybody is racist on some level, but what I see there is a maniacally ambitious government and money, and the dehumanization of the lives of the poor masses. I mean just because someone is brown does not mean that they will uplift someone who is falling behind. I mean, the idea that people sort of lift as they climb is largely a myth.

AMT: Is there evidence that the children of parents who are migrant workers who are gone for long periods of time, are able to access new opportunities because of their parents' sacrifices?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: There are studies that prove that, particularly women who work abroad in the service industry and domestic workers, tend to invest heavily in their families and communities so that their families, the children definitely benefit from better schools, having a slightly better standard of living, maybe a better diet, all of that. Children who are well fed in a physical way but not necessarily emotionally always-- because many women I spoke to, particularly in Hong Kong, talked about the pain of not seeing the children sometimes for two or three years and only seeing them through Facebook or through Facetime or some other sort of modern technology.

AMT: I'm asking about the effect on the kids, but in fact the effect on their moms is huge, or their dads. They’re just so far away.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It depends on the industry. For the domestic workers it is 83 percent female, so this is largely female driven whereas the construction workers tend to be male dominated but, yes a sense of ice sense of isolation. In a place like Hong Kong, there is a certain narrative around the Filipino women that is highly sexualized, for example. They tend to have to deal with that on top of the social stigma that is in itself, a struggle to become a worker but also an independent, respectable woman who is not seen as a sexual object.

AMT: We've been talking about brown people in the developing world. What does it mean to be a brown person in Canada?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It largely depends because I do think that if you are a brown Muslim, it is slightly different from if you are a brown Sikh, even though we sometimes get confused for each other [laughs]. In the west, I noticed two different experiences. There is one that is specific to the Muslim community because I do think the faith self has been racialized into a darker skin colour, but it's also the idea of cheap labour that again, we are the people who drive the cabs, and work at the checkout, and at the coffee shops and—

AMT: Migrant agricultural labourers, too. We just talked to a filmmaker who did a whole documentary on farmer kids in the Leamington area, they're all brown skinned and they're hidden. We don't see them, we don't know who they are.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: No. Initially that was going to be my focus on the chapter in Canada but then the elections happened and I really want to include that [laughs].

AMT: That's interesting because what you're saying is that there are two things happening here. There is the class issue, still the work that other people don't want to do, but it's not solely migrant workers on farms, it's also people who are here. You actually talk about the bus rides at night in Toronto.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Yes, I mean if you were to take the night bus along Yonge Street or Bloor after the subways stop working, at 3 or 4 am, you notice that the majority of the people on that bus are migrant workers who are about to go to a bakery, or a coffee shop, or the airport to start like a five o'clock morning shift. And also if you take a bus that goes through some of the tonier parts of Toronto like Rosedale, or Forest Hill, you'll also see that the majority of the bus riders are domestic workers who are about to go to clean or take care of the children of the upper crust of society.

AMT: So in what you have documented in other countries, you found right here at home.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I find a lot of similarities. I live also in a building where a lot of aging population and there's an army of Filipino and Indonesians and sometimes Somali and Sudanese care workers and security and all sorts of people who are doing work that maybe a few generations ago, would have gone to what we would have called the working class white.

AMT: And of course your point is that it's disproportionate, that even though we are a country, in this city, a city of immigrants and many cultures, that those jobs are disproportionately filled with people with brown skin.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I would argue that, yes.

AMT: But then there is the fact that regardless of economics, your brown skin becomes a political wedge issue.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: It becomes a political wedge issue whether it is on a federal level or even on some local level. I talk about Brampton, Ontario as a community that has over the years become browner, and the anxiety of older, white residents there that there is a kind of white siege or surrender to this mass migration of, you know, swarthy looking people which is not new and in fact, echoes conversations that were happening in America in the early 20th century. It is frighteningly similar to what was going on at the time.

AMT: What impact has bill C-51, now known as the anti-terrorism act, what effect has that had on brown communities in Canada?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: I think it created a sense that there's a two-tier citizenship or the two-tier Canadian. There is the Canadian who is born here and largely white, and there's a Canadian who is naturalized and we’re all immigrants in this country, but even though it doesn't really specify any particular sort of race or religion, I think there was an understanding that it is really meant to target Muslim and Arab communities.

AMT: Going back to suspicions from 9/11?

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Going back to 9/11, yes.

AMT: It's interesting-- you probably have caught the news in the last two weeks out of the US. Somebody sitting on an airplane, having a conversation, using the word Inshallah and next thing you know they're pulled off the plane because someone heard the Arab language. And then the case of another man sitting doing mathematical equations and the woman next to him who is described as blonde, complaining, worried that he's somehow doing a bomb equation. He turns out to be an economics professor of Italian descent who is quote, unquote “swarthy”. What does that tell you? That speaks right to the kinds of things you talk about in your book.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Right. Traveling while brown is probably the expression that our skin colour, the languages that we speak, in the case of the first traveler who said Inshallah sort of sets us as suspicious just by being that having the skin colour and speaking and not doing anything—

AMT: You don't even have to speak.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: You don’t have to speak, you could just be sitting there jotting notes and the fact that these airlines have been able to take off these passengers, or just indulge in an investigation because someone spoke their native tongue, I find pretty shocking because they are caving in to fear.

AMT: Do you see things changing? You've tracked this and documented a wide swath of people whose skin colour affects their prospects, their futures, the way they're treated. Do you see that changing in more enlightened societies like--I don't what I'm asking. It’s a lot to ask.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: [laughs] I see it getting worse if anything. I find it very surprising that after eight years of Barack Obama, the conversation around race in America has degenerated to the level of Donald Trump and the racial and ethnic baiting that he has been indulging is completely unfettered. Despite the fact there is resistance to his rhetoric, it worries me that someone could use that inflammatory language and could pick on communities and say they don't belong here and still be the front runner in a presidential election.

AMT: Because I'm guessing when Barack Obama became President of the US you saw that as a real step forward when it came to the issue of politics and race.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: We all remember the post racial society that we lived in for like two minutes. Having a black American president has not changed the situation of African-Americans in the US dramatically. In fact, as I'm sure you're aware, in the last few years if you're a black male in the US, you're a target.

AMT: So, really you can have the economic and the educational advancement but by the sheer colour of your skin, all of that can be negated depending on where you are and who's across the counter from you.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, education and class will shield you to some extent, but walking down the street late at night, I would not be an author or university professor, I’d be just a middle-aged brown, suspicious looking man. Period.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Kamal Al-Solaylee. His book is called Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means to Everyone. He's an associate professor of journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. Now earlier we were talking about how GPS navigation affects the brain. GPS has come a very long way since we were first introduced to a stilted, yet commanding voice. Today it's possible to have Arnold Schwarzenegger or Homer Simpson or even Bugs Bunny guide you. We will give today's last word to a skit that imagines what it would be like to have actor Morgan Freeman tell you how to get on the highway and give you life advice from the console. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MORGAN FREEMAN: It doesn't matter where you're coming from or where you're headed to, we could all use a little help on the highways and byways of life. Well, well. Look at all that traffic. I told you not to get out on the freeway.

VOICE 2: Sorry.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Don't apologize to me. Apologize to yourself. It’s no wonder you’re [beep] single.

VOICE 2: What?

MORGAN FREEMAN: Take a right here, better make that a left. Ultimately it's up to you to decide. Where would you like to go today, my young friend?

VOICE 2: I’m kind of hungry?

MORGAN FREEMAN: Where would you like to eat?

VOICE 2: Sandwich place?

MORGAN FREEMAN: Sure, if that’s what you want. Church’s chicken is up on the right. How many years have you been driving?

VOICE 2: 15 years.

MORGAN FREEMAN: 15 years and you haven’t learned [beep]. Looks like you chose the wrong path.

VOICE 3: I’m doing anything you told me to do, I don’t understand.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Kind of a metaphor for your life, really. This looks like a nice place to live but you can afford it. You deserve it.

VOICE 2: Yeah, I deserve it, but deserving and affording, that’s not the same thing. You know.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Get yourself a crowbar and take what is rightfully yours. Where do you want to go now, Dummy?

VOICE 4: I was kinda thinking of going to the club.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Sitting home crying, sitting in your boxer shorts, playing Call of Duty, eating Cheetos, falling asleep with your fingers stained orange. Right about now you are probably wondering how am I going to get out of here. Well, I’ll just leave that up to you.

VOICE 3: It’s like a dead end.

MORGAN FREEMAN: I can’t make all the decisions for you. Don’t give in to some other man’s idea of time. Don’t let someone assign a number to where you need to be.

VOICE 4: Yeah, that’s right!

MORGAN FREEMAN: High five, my brother.

VOICE 4: I don’t know how that works.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Tap the screen. Get busy living and get busy driving.

[Music: Extro]

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May 17, 2016 full episode transcript

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