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The Current Transcript for May 18, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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We work for an unjust system and we become upholders of that system despite the fact that our mandate as social workers, officially, is to fight for social justice and to work for social change.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: That is the equivalent of a call to arms to a group of people more used to toeing the line than crossing it. Deena Mandell, who you just heard, is a long time social worker who believes that for too long she and her colleagues have been blindly following government policies even when they hurt the very people social workers are supposed to help. She thinks a little subversion, some extra-legal action to help the vulnerable is necessary in the name of social justice. Of course, some people think she's dead wrong. We've got that debate in an hour. And then, picture this: John Aitchison is an elite wild life cinematographer. He's standing on a tiny platform in the Pacific, 30 metres offshore. His lens is trained on a baby bird, an albatross, about to be swallowed by a shark.

SOUNDCLIP

I was very attached to these young albatrosses, which are beautiful and quite naïve, but there were divers with me who were quite different. They came up from their dives with these very dangerous, three-metre length sharks, saying how beautiful they were, and I thought, we’re taking sides for the wrong reasons. We’re taking sides between predator and prey, and we should really be taking sides between having nature or not having nature.

AMT: He is a man who has made his living watching predators stalk their prey. Hear his thoughts on the beauty and brutality and inevitability of nature in half an hour. And how fitting that we are talking about social justice and about predators and prey with Syria in the headlines. Even as top UN nations are talking ceasefires and peace plans, a power-play unfolding in strategic areas of Syria as al-Qaeda tries to play a long-game against ISIS to create its own territorial control in that troubled country. We're starting there. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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ISIS vs. al-Qaeda in the fight for Syria

Guests: Yasir Abbas, Michael Kugelman

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JOHN KERRY: We call on all parties to the cessation of hostilities to disassociate themselves physically and politically from DAESH and al-Nusra and to endorse the intensified efforts by the United States and Russia to develop shared understandings of the threat posed and the delineation of the territory that is controlled by DAESH and al-Nusra and to consider ways to deal decisively with terrorist groups.

AMT: Well, that is the US Secretary of State John Kerry speaking yesterday in Vienna. He and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov co-chaired a meeting of the International Syria Support Group. Canada is now part of that group. Much of the agenda was predictable for the group. It covered ISIS, humanitarian aid, and whether Russia would continue to back Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But a new enemy was addressed: al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. For the past two years, while the world has been watching ISIS ravage parts of Syria, a different player has been slowly gaining traction. Al-Nusra Front captured international attention last week when al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri urged jihadis in Syria to unite under its banner and possibly establish an emirate in the war torn country. Yasir Abbas is former interpreter for the US Army. He is now a senior analyst with The Stabilization Network. That is Washington DC-based organization that researches violent extremism. He has been tracking al-Nusra Front's movement in Syria over the last two years. And Yasir Abbas joins us from our Washington studio. Hello.

YASIR ABBAS: Hello. Thank you for having me.

AMT: What was the main goal of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s message last week?

YASIR ABBAS: I think the main goal was to speak to other rebel groups to reconcile them with the idea that al-Nusra Front may launch an emirate in the future in Syria, to reconcile the project, their project. A lot of rebel groups’ projects are very different from al-Nusra, even the most extreme ones, even Salafi jihadis inside Syria have a different political project than al-Nusra. It’s mostly national and does not relate to al-Qaeda in any way.

AMT: Okay. First of all, al-Nusra is an affiliate of al-Qaeda. How much of a presence does it have in Syria?

YASIR ABBAS: Al-Nusra has a large presence in Syria, but, unlike ISIS, does not control territory by its own. Most of the territory shares control with other rebel groups. It has managed to embed itself in almost all opposition held areas, from Aleppo in the north all the way down to the south.

AMT: And that is by design. What's it up to?

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct. This way, first of all, it did not marginalize and upset the balance of power within the opposition itself, as well as it avoids being singled out by the international community and the Syrian regime. If it holds a territory, it will be easier to target it, like we are doing now with ISIS.

AMT: Okay. So how many fighters does it have? How does it compare to ISIS?

YASIR ABBAS: There are no accurate numbers but estimates are between 5,000 and 10,000. Now these numbers, of course, we can't confirm it. Compared to ISIS it’s very small, a lot smaller. That's because of two reasons. The first is that it does not hold vast territory as ISIS does. And second, it's highly selective in picking and allowing fighters to join this group.

AMT: Not just anyone can join?

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct.

AMT: Are they mostly Syrian nationals?

YASIR ABBAS: Mostly, yes, but they do have a fair share of foreign jihadis as well.

AMT: Okay. So let's talk a little bit more about how they work on the ground, because you say they share power, but they actually start then to swallow the others.

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct. Nusra Front, when it started in 2011, it almost purely focused on fighting the regime, militarily only. They even in, when it came to revenue generation in the oil fields in the east, for example, they worked through tribes to manage the oil fields they controlled. When it comes to governance they rarely interfered between 2012 and 2014. The third part of it is that they worked with other arm groups, including secular groups in the south and in the north. They cooperated to fight the regime. But in early 2014, they had a shift in behaviour and it was gradual, of course. They slowly started to move against secular groups, that’s including military and civilian groups, and started subsuming them by either forcing them to join the group, accepting its presence, or displacing them outside their territories.

AMT: But by that time they would have had grassroots - a lock a little bit on the grassroots on the regular people.

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct. They started a massive, massive campaign of indoctrination of the local population and they've done it quite well. They started with small moves to education, calling people to educating people on their ideology, presenting the case for the global jihadis in al-Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahiri wants once famously said that we ask you not to throw the people in the ocean before you teach them to swim. And when he said that he was talking to al-Zarqawi at the time, in 2005, I believe. With the al-Nusra Front, al-Nusra took its time to educate and indoctrinate the population and present its case. When I said that they are very selective in who joined the group that's because they want to display a committed, fair force to the local population that will persuade them that this is the virtuous group that will save them from this war.

AMT: Essentially, they are trying to win hearts and minds.

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct.

AMT: And so you say they're going after education. So they're, again, they're going after sort of the infrastructure, right. There also providing utilities. They've got the bakeries up and running, that kind of thing.

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct. Started in July 2014, they increased their activities in governance and service provision. Not only that, but also courts, Sharia courts. They try to project their influence in every Sharia court, even in areas where they have a thin presence and controlled by other rebel groups. So when it comes to services they are quite humble in service provision, because of their lack of resources. Nonetheless, they are trying and they're doing quite a good job in many areas.

AMT: You talk about the Sharia courts. So they're very professional, right? They're very professional in the court system versus the sort of the ad hoc beheading of ISIS.

YASIR ABBAS: That's right. They are very professional. Al-Nusra courts are now in opposition held areas as the most effective and fair courts among the other rebel groups. In addition, they are not as violent as ISIS. As I said earlier, they try to present their case very carefully and in a very gradual and persuasive way. When it comes to punishments, for example, where ISIS or ISIL beheads people for communicating with outside forces, al-Nusra Front and its allies imprison them or lash them and then release them. A very different approach.

AMT: So, we know they're not doing this because they want to create a democracy in Syria. They are looking to make an emirate? What are they up to?

YASIR ABBAS: Absolutely. Al-Nusra is al-Qaeda, there’s no doubt. And they want to establish an emirate in Syria. Now, the time frame of this emirate is unknowing. I don't think they even know it. They started from the beginning of the first speech that the al-Nusra Front’s leader gave in Syria, they declared that we want to establish an Islamic state, an Islamic political system that is based on our interpretation of Islam - their interpretation of Islam. And the timeline of when this will happen is unknowing. What al-Nusra has been doing is slowly conditioning the environment to make it conducive for their future project. I don't think at this time the environment is conducive or ready for their project. That's largely due to the balance of power between al-Nusra and other rebel groups, other opposition rebel groups. Essentially, if al-Nusra decides to launch its emirate at this time, it will be suicidal. They will marginalize the population and it will make an enemy of every other rebel group in Syria.

AMT: Except that they have kind of indicated they're playing a long game and they're almost going to bide their time, right?

YASIR ABBAS: That's correct. That’s correct. There’s an internal debate on when they will launch this image and how long the game is. There's no doubt they're playing the long game, unlike ISIS, in Syria. But when it will happen, I don't think they know. I think there's a debate among their ranks. But it's unclear when it will happen and what the timeline is. Is it five, ten, 20 years, 50 years? They often say that this generation, the generation that's currently fighting, is not the generation that will rule, but rather their children will be the rulers of that emirate.

AMT: Okay. So if they have their eyes on a territory from which to govern, which is a country right now, Syria, what are the implications of that?

YASIR ABBAS: Well, the implications are very clear and easy to state. We’ll have an AQ safe haven in the Middle East and at the heart of the Middle East that's close to Europe, close to other stable states, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia and even Egypt, that al-Qaeda will have reach into to destabilize. In addition to having a safe haven to plan and conduct terrorist attacks on European and even American soil.

AMT: And how realistic is that notion of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan to try to manipulate this kind of territorial control in Syria? How fanciful is it or could it actually happen?

YASIR ABBAS: Him personally, I think he has quite a lot of influence on al-Nusra Front. And now given that he doesn't have a lot of influence on other rebel groups. In fact, his message has been received negatively by other rebel groups as an interference of an outside force. Now, how possible that al-Nusra will have its full control in this area, in Northern Syria in the future, I think it's very realistic. There's no real intervention and no real change within the balance of power in the conflict dynamics there. Al-Nusra, with its current projections, will end up in a very favourable position in the future.

AMT: Okay. Well, Yasir Abbas, thank you for your insights into this.

YASIR ABBAS: My pleasure.

AMT: Yasir Abbas is a former interpreter for the US Army. He’s now a senior analyst with The Stabilization Network in Washington DC. Al-Qaeda’s gains in Syria are not surprising for watchers of this organization. There are growing concerns among some analysts that the jihadi group is gaining ground in territory beyond its traditional strongholds. Michael Kugelman is among those who have sounded the alarm. He is a Senior Associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and that’s where we've reached him. Hello.

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Good morning.

AMT: What do you make of this plan by al-Qaeda, that its stated plan to create an emirate in Syria? Could they succeed?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Well, I mean, it's certainly concerning for the reasons that were just mentioned. You're looking at the very real possibility of an al-Qaeda state perilously close to Europe's doorstep, right in the middle of one of the world's biggest conflict zones and right in the midst of the ISIS caliphate. The world has really been fixated on an ISIS over the last few years and yet quietly al-Qaeda has remained very strong and I think it’s used this attention on ISIS to essentially retool and reload. I mean, you've had very powerful al-Qaeda affiliates in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa over the last few years, particularly the one in Yemen, which not too long ago US officials described as the biggest terrorist threat to the West. So, what we're hearing about Nusra Front in al-Qaeda – pardon me - in Syria is really not that concerning. And think what's also concerning is that, according to a number of reports, the central al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan is actually sending a number of top leaders to Syria, which suggests that al-Qaeda is really serious about making Syria the next Afghanistan, so to speak, in the sense that it could become the big place that they use as a sanctuary to plan out all kinds of horrible things.

AMT: Okay. So I just have this picture because you say they're sending their top leaders to Syria from Pakistan. Meanwhile, our top Western leaders have been going to Vienna to talk about peace process. Canada is now part of the International Syria Support Group. How do we get to the point where we have two terrorist groups openly talking and fighting for territory in what was an autonomous country while all the established governments are off in Europe talking to themselves?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Well, I mean, clearly, as is well known, there's never been a very coherent plan. And there's always been very different views and opinions among key countries in the West and also countries in the region, in the Middle East, as to what should be done about this problem in Syria. And a number of folks have argued that Western countries should have done a better job of supporting some of these more modest or moderate rebel groups in Syria in order to strengthen them and thereby weaken the radical groups, like Nusra and others like them. But, yeah, that's actually a very risky proposition. I think that there's something inherently dangerous about sending a lot of arms and money into a country that is already conflict ridden. And, particularly, even if you think you're arming groups that may be more moderate than others, the line is oftentimes very grey. Back in the 1980s the US and other countries were providing a lot of support to anti-Soviet Mujahideen rebels and those folks later became what would become al-Qaeda, the Taliban, et cetera. So, it's a really complicated state of affairs.

AMT: Well, and it is, but, again, we have two major terrorist groups fighting it out, and it's an autonomous country, and that the West seems kind of incapable of actually confronting that. What are we supposed to take from that?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: I really think that there's no, there's clearly no cure all here. But I think that the best way to deal with this very troubling situation of the two major terror groups in the world in a position to do really big bad things in Syria is to push forward even more with this political solution, with the cease fire plan, because if you can somehow get a real sustained cease fire and later peace – I’m not saying it's going to be easy by any means - if you can get that, that could in effect weaken, it could make the environment much more difficult for a group like Nusra to, if it wanted to declare, an emirate and do the types of things that it's been threatening to do, because, again, the military solutions, to me, seem very unpalatable. And if you were to, you know, talk about airstrikes and doing things to kill the terrorists, I mean, that's all well and good, but at the end of the day-- You could you could arm rebels and kill terrorists, but at the end of the day you have these ideologies, these violent extremist ideologies that are so deep seated in this country and other countries in the region and around the world that these groups will remain strong regardless of what you may do tactically in a military context.

AMT: Well and we just heard that al-Nusra is actually going after those same moderate rebel groups and then essentially swallowing them up or trying to. Does this make a partnership with the Assad regime inevitable for the West?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: It certainly is not a very pleasant thought. I don't think so. I can’t imagine, given what's been happening in Syria over the last two years. I think that the West would still, ideally, want Assad to go. And I really think that if you want to have any hope of peace or any hope of a cease fire in Syria moving forward, it would probably have to be in a context where the current leadership, the current government is Syria is not there.

AMT: Could al-Qaeda and ISIS essentially cancel each other out?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Well, that would be nice. What I fear could happen instead, because these are two groups in very open competition now, I fear that they could essentially try to start one-upping each other with increasingly horrifying attacks to really appeal to potential recruits and, in effect, they would both want to show that they're the baddest brute on the block in order to draw in recruitment. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS, they have the capacity to do these types of things. So I'd like to think that they could sort of cancel each other out, but I think, at least in the near term, we could have an opposite effect where they could both become stronger and try to show their strength and show their brutality to draw recruits to their respective causes.

AMT: Okay. Well, Michael Kugelman, thanks for your thoughts. I guess the biggest worry there is the civilians caught in the middle, as always. Thank you for talking to me.

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Thank you.

AMT: Michael Kugelman, Senior Associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music]

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'We have an obligation to care for nature,' says wildlife filmmaker

Guests: John Aitchison

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

[Music: theme]

AMT: Still to come, the blurred line between social work and social justice, we hear the argument for social workers bending the rules, even breaking the law. That story in half an hour. But first, into the wild.

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[Large group of geese squawking in distance]

I’m in a hide looking out over a frozen lake in the Midwest, in Missouri. I just had to use my tea from a flask to thaw out the ground so that the tripod wouldn’t fall over. But despite it being so cold it is actually spring and the birds have started to migrate north. And the ones that I'm hoping to film landing on this lake, just starting to come in over ahead, are snow geese. They’re in beautiful long V-shaped skeins. Maybe 200 birds in a skein, just waving slightly as the line of birds fly forth.

AMT: That is John Aitchison describing the graceful migration of snow geese. And inside that freezing hide, it is just another day at the office for the wildlife filmmaker. He has travelled to some of the most remote parts of the world to document wildlife - from lynx in the Yukon to Emperor penguins in Antarctica - all in the hope of showing people they should care about what happens to creatures in nature. John Aitchison's new book is The Shark and the Albatross and it tells the stories of some of his encounters. John Aitchison joins me from Glasgow, Scotland. Hello.

JOHN AITCHISON: Hello.

AMT: It's so interesting listening to that tape. First, I thought it was background noise. I realized that those were the birds.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. That's the geese, the snow geese. They're in such big numbers. In fact, we filmed more than a million on one day when they stopped at one lake on their way north and the background sound of them talking to each other was almost like sea. It didn’t sound like birds at all. And when they took off, the sound was extraordinary. I’ve never heard anything like it. It was like an explosion or a football crowd or a jet engine. It was that sort of almost white noise, but extraordinarily loud.

AMT: And when you're filming something like that what are you thinking?

JOHN AITCHISON: Actually, it was almost like having your brain jammed. It was so overwhelming an experience that I almost wasn't thinking at all. I remember thinking, I wish this would stop. And then I immediately thought, I wish this would go on forever because it was amongst the most amazing things I've ever seen, I think. It was very moving, actually, seeing so many birds because much of the world is depleted and we don't get much of a glimpse of what the past was like. And in the past nature was everywhere and very abundant and that was, for me anyway, a glimpse of what the past in North America used to be, where birds or other animals as well were so numerous that you would see from one horizon to another just covered in bison or passenger pigeons or birds like snow geese.

AMT: And I haven't seen that footage. I'm guessing it's out there now. But what did it look like? Could you see the sky at all?

JOHN AITCHISON: No, no, not looking towards the flock. It was actually filmed for a series called The Hunt, which is being shown in this country, but hasn't yet been shown in North America, so it's coming to you quite soon; it’ll be on this year. It was almost like static on a television screen, actually. It was black and white dots, because the birds are mostly white, but some of them are darker. And when they were flapping their wings the black wing tips flicker and it just looked like a like a random pattern. It was almost a natural history-like, in a sense, almost like they were tiling the sky. And the thing I didn't expect was as they took off the air that they displaced, all those wings, pushed sideways out from under the flock and we got bombarded by a gale, really, blowing all sorts of stuff off the ice and the water, splashed with water and leaves and feathers and the smell of birds as well. It was amazing.

AMT: Fascinating. So tell me what you do. How do you go about capturing wildlife on film?

JOHN AITCHISON: It depends on the subject, actually. So, sometimes I film from boats, sometimes from the land, sometimes in hides, concealed. It's mostly that, I suppose, because my type of filming is what's called long lens topside. So, I don't go underwater and I tend his telephoto lenses. So I mostly have to hide from the animals that I'm filming. And that was another thing about the geese that was a pleasure because we didn't have to hide from them. But very often I'll be crouched in a small canvas blind, maybe a metre on each side and a metre and a half high, maybe for 18 hours watching an eider duck nest or—The next job I’m doing I’m supposed to be filming saiga antelope calves, which are just born and they stay static hidden in the grass for about 12 hours and then their moms come and collect them, so we have to get there in the dark, find the calves, put up the hide, and then I'll stay in the hide for that long until the mom turns up, film what happens, and then next morning do it again somewhere else.

AMT: Did you have to train yourself to have that kind of patience?

JOHN AITCHISON: No, no. Actually, it comes quite easily. Which might sound strange, but what I find is that waiting for something like that isn't boring. It's interesting, because there's always the prospect that something will happen and it'll be either the thing you want to happen or something else will happen, even if that doesn't happen. So if your interested in natural history and you’re concealed somewhere, it's wonderful. It's like being invisible and nature just carries on around you. So I’m very lucky. I get to go to extraordinary places - nature reserves - the best places in the world, really, for wildlife and then sit and see what happens.

AMT: Do you ever feel as if you're intruding on their space?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes, sometimes. Of course, the purpose of all this is not to make a difference, not to spoil things. So I go to great lengths not to mess anything up for the animals. But, of course, most animals are frightened of people, so just by being there, to some extent, you make a difference. Hence, the hide. In other ways, the travel we do and so on, they may make some differences too. So the excuse I have anyway is that the outcome has to make more difference than the negative sides. It has to do more good than harm.

AMT: Well, let's talk about some of the stories. You start with the journey of the albatross. Tell us about filming these birds.

JOHN AITCHISON: Well, these were a type of tropical albatross. Most albatrosses live in the southern ocean where it's very windy, because they need strong winds to be able to fly. They don't really flap, they soar. But some smaller species live in in the tropics. And this particular type was living on an island in the Hawaiian chain. This was a non-inhabited island and the bird's nest there for that reason. And then when the young birds need to fly for the first time they can't go very far because their island is very small and they have to, not flap their wings, but use the air that's blowing across the island. And on a windy day when they're ready to go they take this sort of leap of faith and they set off across the sea for the first time. And, extraordinarily, tiger sharks know when this happens and they'll swim thousands of miles and wait just offshore and try and intercept some of the albatrosses. And the stronger birds just keep going, but the less confident or the weaker ones or the unlucky ones land on the water and sometimes the sharks get them. So that's what I was trying to film from a platform offshore.

AMT: It’s not always easy to get them, even when they're quite literally sitting ducks.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, some of them are alert enough that when the shark attacks then they get displaced by the water that the shark pushes out of the way and if they're quick, they can fly away, they can run on the water and fly off. And that's what happened to the first one that I filmed, which, from my point of view, was a huge relief because I had taken sides, if you like. I was on the albatrosses’ side. I'd seen the birds on the shore and I like birds and I was very attached to these young albatrosses, which are beautiful and quite naive. But there were divers with me who were filming underwater and they were quite different. They came up from their dives with these very dangerous three-metre long sharks saying how beautiful they were and how amazing it was that they could navigate all this way and that they arrived on the day the first albatrosses took off from the island, the first sharks arrived. They were saying, you know, they're in trouble there. They’re being fished by people and they cut off their fins and eat them in soup and so on. Meanwhile, on the land we are finding the young albatrosses choked by plastic their parents brought them, thinking it was food. And I thought, well, we're taking sides for the wrong reasons. We're taking sides between predator and prey and we should really be taking sides between having nature or not having nature and we should do this consciously, because, presently, we’re just sort of drifting into it. And, of course, I'm on nature’s side and I wish more of us were.

AMT: Tell us about another place that you go, Yellowstone Park. You were observing wolves.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. Yellowstone is an extraordinary place. It’s a very large national park. It's been protected for a hundred years. And wolves were reintroduced to it, some decades ago, having been removed completely by hunting much longer ago. So, for a long time that there’d been no wolves and the elk numbers it increased [indecipherable] a lot of overgrazing and even things like beavers had gone because with the elk there they were displacing moose, which were part of the ecosystem that affects beavers and beavers were a casualty, if you like, of there being no wolves. So, the decision was made to bring wolves back to the park and some were reintroduced from Canada. And it was at almost their highest point really of their recovery that we filmed them, one winter. And I was astonished by them really. They're so intelligent.

AMT: And you got to see them, actually, hunt the prey then?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. I saw them catch a bull elk in the distance, but it was too dark to film that. And when it was light enough to film them I saw them drive an elk or follow one, chase him into a river. He ran into a small river to escape them and because the water was up his belly, the wolves couldn't get at him very easily and he kept them at bay. But he couldn't stay in the river indefinitely because it was so cold and it was fascinating. This was one of the most interesting things, really, because the alpha female just watched. She didn't get involved. She just sat down and watched. The younger wolves couldn't resist trying to catch him in the water. And then gradually lost interest and they'd lie down. And eventually there was just one left and the elk tiptoed away and that one chased him and the others joined in. He came back to the river. And he did it three times, which is brilliant for the filming. And, eventually, they all got bored and he left and ran off into the forest and only then the alpha female came and sniffed around the whole area, worked out where he’d gone, and I think was picking up information about how tired he was and how stressed he was by now, because he was very cold. And then she followed him into the forest knowing that she could keep him from coming back to the river again. I don't know what the outcome was, but it was a real insight into how their minds work and how they, an intelligent animal like that, can plan, really. Really hunt.

AMT: What's it like to watch such a dramatic scene.

JOHN AITCHISON: Well, of course, as a filmmaker it's gold dust, isn’t it? You want something like that to happen. I'm quite a soft hearted filmmaker and very often I’m on the side of the prey, as I was saying, and I didn't mind that the elk escaped, really. But it in the end, of course, the wolves have to eat too. And we make associations, don’t we. I think when something like that happens you see you start to, I think, see aspects of nature that are applicable to your own life. And that's how I feel about it anyway. I think I draw lessons from the natural events I see and apply them more widely. And I'm sure a lot of us do that. I think nature’s a great instructor and a great metaphor for us.

AMT: And so what lessons did you take from that series of scenes?

JOHN AITCHISON: In that instance, I think I was very impressed by teamwork, because we were working as a team to do that. It wasn't just me that, of course, it hardly ever is. And the wolves there were doing that as a team as well. An individual wolf wouldn’t have had a chance. They would have done something very differently and not really succeeded. There was another example, actually, where I filmed a young albatross – again an albatross but a wandering albatross – the bird with the biggest wingspan in the world, leaving its island for the first time after it had hatched and grown up and was ready to go. And it couldn't do it very well. It was crashing all the time and they're very fragile. Their wing bones are easy to break. And each time it was plod back up the hill and try again. It was difficult and painful for it, clearly, and it really didn't look like it was going to succeed. But it didn't give up. And it hadn't been filmed before, as far as I'm aware, and I remember thinking later that the because of it being filmed for a Frozen Planet, the BBC series, perhaps a hundred million people had seen that afterwards, where previously nobody had seen it, really. And that maybe for a few people in difficult situations, as my grandmother was at the time, that that doggedness, that determination not to give up might just be an inspiration when times are tough. Another thing we filmed was Adélie penguins taking their first swim and it was quite similar in some ways. They young Adélies go into the water but they don't know how to swim and they come out at funny angles. And they keep their heads up to start with because they're frightened of the water and then they get the idea that they can stick their heads in. And they can see underwater and then they take a dive, but they don't know how to stay the right way up. They come out of the water upside down and splash around and some get frightened and go back. Eventually, quite quickly, 15 minutes maybe, they’re off and they're swimming and they’re diving and they’re penguins. But they have to learn how to do it.

AMT: You spent time with different types of penguins, but in the end, it's the emperor penguins who impress you the most.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. They're the ultimate bird, really. In many ways, they’re the ultimate in where they live, which is - I discovered almost exactly opposite where I live in Scotland - down south of New Zealand on the Antarctic continent. They don't ever set foot on land unless something goes wrong for them and they come up on a beach somewhere funny. But their lives are lived either in liquid water or on frozen water. And even their eggs are laid and then kept warm on their feet on the ice. There are lots of superlatives about them: The males don’t eat for a hundred days. They nest in the Antarctic winter when it can get us cold as minus 70 Centigrade. So, they really are extreme birds. And it turns out they're very, very nice. They’re very friendly birds too, which, of course, is a pleasure if you go and film something and you discover that it likes you. They trusted us. They came—

AMT: They followed you around, didn’t they?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yeah, they did. They did. And they were especially fond of the divers’ air bottles. That was the thing that they really, really liked, because they were very penguin-like in shape, I think. They’d all cluster around the air bottles.

AMT: They followed you around and you followed them around.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes.

AMT: Tell us what it's like when they come out of the water.

JOHN AITCHISON: We had to go to the edge of the ice to film them coming out of the water. We were camping on the ice, so we were never on the land. But we had to travel to very thin ice where the first liquid water was. In fact, it was a series of holes. They didn’t go in over the edge of the ice. They went in through these quite small holes, which look like ponds, really, sort of kitchen table sized. And it was very dangerous, because the ice there was only a few inches thick and it might break up, especially if there was a wind from inland blowing out to sea. We didn't want to be on three kilometres of ice that was blowing out sea because it would start to break quite quickly. So in order to find a way there we had to get through pressure ridges, which are like walls of slabs of ice all stacked up. And so did the penguins. And we reasoned that they would know the easiest way because they can’t climb very easily, not having hands. They can only use the beaks and their feet to climb over things. On the other side, they have to fall down on their bellies and slide down head first, so they go for the lowest places. And then with our skidoos and all the equipment we had to chip away at the ice and make a smooth bit through there so we could go through. And we realized we succeeded when instead of following the penguins, we looked around and the penguins were following us because we'd made the smoothest path. But they were brilliant. They were such great company.

AMT: It sounds wonderful. And it's interesting. You don't only go to the wilderness. You often end up in the cities. Tell us about the peregrines of New York.

JOHN AITCHISON: Well, this is, I think, one of the most surprising things, in fact. And it's-- I was filming for a series that will be on in this country later this year called Planet Earth Two, which you'll see in Canada as well, I hope, later on. And it was a program just about wildlife in cities and it turns out, of course, that there is quite a lot of wildlife in cities if you look carefully. The peregrines are an amazing success story for conservation and, of course, for peregrines, because they were declining very fast in North America when, in the sixties, there was an agricultural chemical called DDT used on fields and orchards and so on. And as top predators peregrines were eating birds which had eaten insects which were poisoned by this chemical. And the peregrines were accumulating this chemical and it was cracking their eggs when they were incubating, so they disappeared. There were no peregrines nesting east of the Mississippi River at all in the 1960s, the late sixties. Anyway, a few people decided they’d do something about this and they set up something called the Peregrine Fund and captive-bred the birds. DDT was banned in the meantime. And they released the young peregrines when they could fly and they did spectacularly well in cities, especially New York City where there are now, I think, 18 pair this year - there were 17 when we were filming them - nesting on buildings because the buildings are quite like cliffs, which is where they’d nest in the wild. And they eat pigeons, which are what they would eat in the wild as well, which are another bird that’s come into the towns.

AMT: And so what was it like to watch them in this urban area?

JOHN AITCHISON: It was just spectacular, because the skyline anyway is an amazing backdrop. If you've got midtown Manhattan as your backdrop for anything, it's going to look good. And then the peregrines were, one pair we filmed were using the Chrysler Building as a hunting perch. So at our eye level, more or less, they were flying around. We were on an adjacent building. They were flying around using the updrafts from the buildings and perching on the radio aerials on the Chrysler Building and then using that as a place to stoop down on pigeons from when they saw the pigeons flying underneath them. So we’d go to the edge and crane over and see them bombing down these artificial canyons chasing the pigeons, which know they're coming. They're very canny [indecipherable] and they've got a peregrine on their tail. And then the peregrine would come back up, rising up past us, reflected in these mirrored glass buildings. It was just amazing. And because I think in that ultimate urban place where there are millions and millions of people, if you could just look up and see a wild spirit like that in that place, I don't know, it lifts your spirit. You feel so much the better for knowing that nature is there, I think. And in fact, there was a man we were working with who works with the city who bands the birds every year, the young birds, and he was saying after 9/11 he’d gone down to where the Twin Towers had fallen as a volunteer to help move the rubble by hand. There were great gangs of people moving rubble away by hand. And he looked up through all the smoke and the dust in the destruction and he saw a peregrine fly over, which was one of the ones that nest near Wall Street. And he said it just gave him such a sense of hope that renewal was possible, that rebirth was possible after that horrible event and destruction.

AMT: Do you feel that way when you finish a shoot?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yeah. It depends what I've been filming, but absolutely. I think it's reviving and restoring and rejuvenating to have contact with nature. And I guess so many of us live urban lives now, so much of the time, that that's a rarer thing than it ever has been in the past. And I think it's our loss. You know, we should do our best to bring children up with some contact with nature, because it's there as a touchstone for you, I think. If you've difficult times in your life and all you can see is concrete, then where else to go, really? You've got to have something that can separate you from manmade concerns. At least that's how I feel and it’s why I find nature is uplifting because I can lift myself out of my own life and live in, by proxy, in some other life, which is in some ways much better, I think. It's a way of transporting yourself mentally. That's a very important thing.

AMT: And it's not simple. It takes a lot of effort. What is it about it that makes you want to keep going back?

JOHN AITCHISON: There are many things, actually. There's an aesthetic thing, from my point of view, which is to do with beauty, because I think that we underrate beauty. It moves people in a way that any amount of rational argument doesn't. And facts are fascinating. I'm fascinated by the stories behind why animals do what they do, but I think the thing that really moves people, and they say it after the programs. They say how affected they were by the beauty of what they saw. It makes people care and caring, I think, is the most important thing of all because I care about conservation. I care about conserving what we have, much of which is being lost at an increasing rate. And we have to do this. It's not really optional. It may seem optional now, but once it's gone, it's gone. And then it will be clear to us that it wasn't really optional. We just made a mistake. We don't want to make that mistake. We should be doing something about it now.

AMT: And so as you wander the earth in cold and hot and wait for days for an encounter that will happen on its terms, what do you want us to learn from what you do?

JOHN AITCHISON: What I hope is that by making films—There are two things, really. Films and photography are a kind of memory of what exists. So, they’re very real. They really do make you believe you've seen the thing yourself. And, in a sense, we're accumulating these memories as a collective memory. So, now I think we can't say that we didn't know. It would be impossible, I think, now for something like the passenger pigeon to go extinct and people say, oh, I didn't realize that was happening. So there's that. And I think the other thing is that I really do think that we have an obligation to care for nature. It matters to us in a material way, but also much is to us because it's there and we've grown up with it and we need it and it has a right to exist in its own right. And that's, I think, something which comes from knowledge but also about really believing that thing matters and caring for it directly. And those things can be done in films. The practical applications of conservation are done by people on the ground, but the inspiration can come from films and I hope that the films that I've been involved with, and hopefully will be involved with, will do that. I hope they’ll inspire people to care.

AMT: John Aitchison, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

JOHN AITCHISON: It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

AMT: Wildlife filmmaker John Aitchison. His new book is called The Shark and the Albatross. And if you go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, we are posting pictures of some of his still photographs. They’re just beautiful. You know, there are different kinds of pictures you find on the internet these days. You're going to love these. John Aitchison’s work on our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Social workers have a duty to skirt edge of the law, says author

Guests: Deena Mandell, John Tomlison, John Mayr

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[clapping and cheering]

Man needs salt as he needs air and water. This salt comes from the Indian Ocean. Let every Indian claim it as his right.

AMT: That's from the movie Ghandhi and Gandhi portrayed Mahatma Gandhi's 1930 march to the sea in that clip. Thousands of followers in tow went with Gandhi, he arrived at the shore, he picked up a handful of salt, and that was an action illegal under British colonial law which heavily taxed salt and strictly forbade Indians from even gathering grains of it for their own use. Gandhi's fight for social justice has of course served as an example to generations of people fighting for the poor and oppressed and that includes social workers, but some in the field of social work are grappling with whether they should ever follow his example of breaking the law, or at least skirting its edges if it's in the name of social justice. For more on this growing conversation, I'm joined by Deena Mandell who is a professor of graduate social work at Wilfrid Laurier University and also a clinical social worker. She is the co-editor of a book called Subversive Action: Extralegal Practices for Social Justice. Deena Mandell is in Kitchener, Ontario. Hello.

DEENA MANDELL: Hello.

AMT: First of all, what do you mean by extralegal practices?

DEENA MANDELL: Extralegal could mean skirting the law or breaking the spirit of the law, but not the letter of the law and sometimes it might mean actually breaking the law and violating whatever the law of the land happens to be.

AMT: And why does there need to be a discussion about whether social workers should skirt the edge of the law or even go beyond legal boundaries?

DEENA MANDELL: I think because very often we work for an unjust system at its core or unjust in small ways and we become upholders of that system despite the fact that our mandate as social workers officially is to fight for social justice and to work for social change. So, sometimes the system that employs us or funds the agencies that we work for requires us to act within a framework that we consider unjust. If you're going to honour your mandate to fight for social justice, then you come face to face with laws that you might think are wrong or structural policies in institutions

AMT: Has there been a specific incident that has made this clear to you?

DEENA MANDELL: Well, there have been many incidents that could have and should have and I still struggle with how long it's taken me. I see it around welfare, social services, the sixties scoop with First Nations in this country. Social workers were very heavily implicated in that. We've gone along with things. The G20 was the one that really kind of woke me out of my stupor, I'd say.

AMT: How so?

DEENA MANDELL: Well, I saw things happening that I knew were not within the rights of the government to do. People being questioned and, during the days of the G20, being asked to show identification when we don't do that here without good reason, or we're not supposed to. A thousand people were arrested who had committed no crime, they were protesting. We all know the story. And then there was the other big one of a couple of officers not in uniform sitting in a panel discussion at my university about decriminalization of descent. My son got arrested for appearing at the panel because it was considered a breach of his bail conditions.

AMT: Why was he on bail?

DEENA MANDELL: He had a number of charges against him from the G20, he was one of the organizers, and he had been given bail but the Crown wasn't happy with that so they were looking for an opportunity to re-arrest him and when he appeared on two panels, he was considered to be in breach of his bail conditions, which were that he could not participate in any public demonstration.

AMT: So your own family experience got you thinking about this in a wider way?

DEENA MANDELL: Yes.

AMT: Because what you're outlining is really about police action, it's not about social work issues.

DEENA MANDELL: That's right, but I was very conscious that the people who were outraged by what was happening, the reaction at the university against this infiltration by the police didn't come from social work faculty, it came from community activists, students and faculty members in other areas of the university and I found myself thinking there's something wrong here.

AMT: So your concern is that social workers have become too close to wanting to legitimize the institutional side of things as opposed to the people with whom they're supposed to work?

DEENA MANDELL: I think that it wouldn't be fair to say that we don't care about the people that we work with or that we don't identify with them, but we're caught structurally between wanting to serve the best interests of those people and working for the system. Agencies get funded by governments largely and by grants and so you're policed pretty heavily by your agency around not biting the hand that feeds you. We're in a bit of a quandary there, you can't push back against institutions that have hired you, might fire you if you push back and you're caught protecting your own privilege and the status of your profession instead of the client sometimes.

AMT: So where do you actually come down on this? Should social workers do things that are extralegal at times?

DEENA MANDELL: [laughs] Yep, I think so.

AMT: Under what circumstances would you see this is the right thing to do?

DEENA MANDELL: I have to tell you I think it happens every day. I'm sure that there will be social workers listening to this rolling their eyes thinking, yeah I bend the rules around eligibility for extra social service money here and there, or I don't follow the children's aid guidelines to the letter in some cases because I don't think that's in the best interest of the family. On a one on one basis, I know that that happens and people just quietly do that in the interest of their clients, but we tend to fight any larger battles in a very organized way; in a very professionalized way; a very polite way, and I don't think we take to the streets very often. I can't think of a time when we have here in this country.

AMT: You know we heard that clip at the beginning. When Mahatma Gandhi broke the law, it was in the context of colonial rule with oppressive laws. How do you think social workers should operate under that type of government?

DEENA MANDELL: I would hope that if I were living under a regime like that, I would absolutely not hesitate to stick my neck out and break the law to do what was right. The differences between those repressive regimes and our own are not as stark and as absolute as we would like to think. So that for example, under the G20, as civil rights were being violated, so you still stand by and watch that happen or do you get out in the streets and name what's happening and say this isn't right? So yes, I think under circumstances like that we have an obligation.

AMT: It's interesting you say that under a really oppressive government you would not hesitate but of course when people do that under those governments, they risk severe punishment, imprisonment, torture, death. In this country, you're not going to lose your life if you stick up for something.

DEENA MANDELL: No, the most you're likely to lose is your job.

AMT: You know, we talk about the difference maybe between a democracy and other kinds of governments, so this might be a good time to bring in the experience of one specific man. This is an experience of a social worker who defied rules to do what he felt would be right and it was 1973, an Aboriginal girl in Australia named Nola ended up placed with a white foster family. John Tomlinson was a social worker at the time, he knew she belonged with her parents and he decided to make that happen. John Tomlinson is now a visiting scholar in social work at Queensland university of Technology. We reached him in Sydney, Australia, listen to this conversation. How did Nola and up with a white foster family?

JOHN TOMLISON: Well, originally, when she was born, she was quite ill and her mother took her to the hospital and she spent eight months in a children's home, and then it was arranged by the hospital worker so she would get placed with the white foster family because the department responsible for looking after Aboriginal kids, hadn't been able to find an Aboriginal foster parent that was capable of looking after her.

AMT: Why had her parents been unable to get her back?

JOHN TOMLISON: They tried on several occasions and on one occasion, the white foster parents just went and saw the head of the welfare branch and said that they wanted to keep her and the acting head of the welfare branch told the social worker looking after her that she should stay away from the Browns and stop annoying them.

AMT: The Browns were the family that had fostered her, but the parents could have taken her back, there was no reason for them not to have her?

JOHN TOMLISON: No, no, I mean the authorities said there was no reason why she can’t come home.

AMT: But her foster parents wanted to keep her with them?

JOHN TOMLISON: They did and they even approached the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to try and stop her returning to Maningrida.

AMT: And so what had your superiors and the minister of Aboriginal affairs said should happen to her?

JOHN TOMLISON: What they said was that her father should be brought into town, a court case should be set up to test the custody of Nola, but myself and my colleagues were concerned that there had been many judgements that had gone against Aboriginal parents.

AMT: And so you thought that any testing of the custody for her would result in her staying with the foster family? So what did you do?

JOHN TOMLISON: Well, Bill Ryan, director of Aboriginal legal aid, and I agreed that I'd get Nola and hand her over to Jack, the father, and Bill would fly her father and Nola back to Maningrida. And that's what he did.

AMT: And what happened?

JOHN TOMLISON: We thought that everything had gone pretty well. I think it was just on two weeks and then the Australian newspaper ran a front page story claiming that Nola had been abducted and was being subjected to all sorts of mistreatment at Maningrida, which was just totally untrue.

AMT: But why didn't the court take her back?

JOHN TOMLISON: The Crown law advised once she was back with her parents, that was where the custody was and it would be silly to pretend that the parents have every right to her.

AMT: So in fact, there was no legal reason for her to stay with the foster parents and once she was back with her biological parents, there was no legal way to get her away from them.

JOHN TOMLISON: That's precisely the legal situation, yes.

AMT: But you went against your superior’s orders.

JOHN TOMLISON: [laughs] And they took that pretty badly, as superiors usually do. I was demoted to the lowest grade social work rank that was possible to demote me to.

AMT: But what you did was, under Australian law, illegal, was it not?

JOHN TOMLISON: And the public service law was illegal and in that sense, it's extralegal. It's not illegal in a criminal sense.

AMT: So you were breaking the public service law, but you felt strongly. Why did you do it?

JOHN TOMLISON: Well, I've spent a lot of time working with Aboriginal people and I thought the Aboriginal community was entitled to have control of their children. I've seen many examples of kids brought up in white foster homes or institutions that had gone very badly, and examples where kids brought up with Aboriginal families had gone very well.

AMT: Did you see it as your role, or even your duty as a social worker to take the action you took?

JOHN TOMLISON: I saw it as a necessary action to take. If I was going to be serious about working with the Aboriginal people in their self interests, I couldn't see any alternatives and I still don’t.

AMT: So you were working in a system that wasn't actually making that easy for you to do; to work with them in their own interests.

JOHN TOMLISON: [laughs] No. No. The government was saying that’s what they were doing. The Northern Territory was very much a frontier society with white people looking after their own interests, and Aboriginees came a very bad last.

AMT: And so you knew that you were going against—

JOHN TOMLISON: [laughs] Yes, I knew there would be repercussions.

AMT: And you didn't care.

JOHN TOMLISON: I thought that we had done it in a way which would have allowed the director and the minister off the hook, but it was the breaking of the story in the Murdoch papers which caused unrest right through.

AMT: What happened, what were the consequences?

JOHN TOMLISON: People wrote to the minister from America and from Holland, sending him money to buy Nola back, they thought it was a question of Aboriginal people just wanting her back to sell her. Lots of things happened, there was a strike of social workers in support of me because I'd been demoted that lasted three weeks.

AMT: Hold on, that's pretty provocative. So all social workers went on strike for three weeks in support of you?

JOHN TOMLISON: All but one.

AMT: All but one, who was the one [laughs]?

JOHN TOMLISON: She was the one who had been working with the white foster family and she felt awkward by not giving the white foster family a chance to say goodbye to Nola. We felt that if I had done that, they would have moved to stop Nola back to her family.

AMT: Did you ever face legal consequences?

JOHN TOMLISON: Apart from public service charges, no.

AMT: Would you advise a young social worker nowadays to do what you did?

JOHN TOMLISON: Yes, I think it's necessary. At the moment, we're seeing more and more Aboriginal people incarcerated, Aboriginal kids from New South Wales in the last 25 years have gone from 1,000 in care to 4,000 in care. What social workers should be doing is making sure that they are doing everything they can so that custody is the last resort, whether with a white foster family, or jail, or a children's institution.

AMT: And how willing do you think the social workers in Australia today would be? Would they go as far as you?

JOHN TOMLISON: I don't think they're doing as well as they should be doing. I think there are some who will disobey their superior’s orders, but many seem to be reluctant to do anything to upset their promotional prospects.

AMT: And what do you think of that?

JOHN TOMLISON: I think it's a cop out. I mean, you've got to get up in the morning and when you clean your teeth, be able to look yourself in the mirror.

AMT: That's John Tomlinson, former social worker in Australia, now a visiting scholar in social work at Queensland University of Technology Deena Mandell, can you imagine a Canadian social worker today doing what he did in 1973?

DEENA MANDELL: No, I can't. I have to say John is one of my heroes and I particularly love that story, because although it's on a much more micro scale than the other stories in the book about social workers helping to bring down apartheid or resisting the Marcos regime and so forth, it's the one that probably most Canadian social workers could actually relate to, in so far as each of them is in a position probably daily, or once a week, or once a month, where they must be thinking this isn't right and I wish I didn't have to do this, and we do not make the choice that John did. It was a very brave choice, but I think the fact that there was a social work strike, tells you just how much it resonated with social workers; that there must have been so many who wished they had done the same thing at times.

AMT: Well, and some of the statistics you listed about the high numbers of Indigenous people incarcerated and children in care are similar to the situation in Canada.

DEENA MANDELL: Absolutely, and getting worse all the time.

AMT: So should social workers here have a hard time looking themselves in the mirror?

DEENA MANDELL: [laughs] Yes, sometimes, and I include myself in that. I do not accuse my colleagues of things that I don't beat my own breast about sometimes.

AMT: I am speaking to Deena Mandell, professor of graduate social work at Wilfrid Laurier University, a clinical social worker and the co-editor of Subversive Action: Extralegal practices for Social Justice. John Mayr is the registrar and CEO of the BC College of Social Workers, that's the regulatory body. As well he's the president of the Canadian Council of Social Work Regulators. He's been listening in from Vancouver, hello.

JOHN MAYR: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What are you thinking of as you listen? Is there ever a place for social workers in Canada to skirt, or step beyond the bounds of the law?

JOHN MAYR: Not only is there a place, but I think there is a duty and it's one of the underlying foundations of social work that there is a strong commitment to social justice.

AMT: And so if we could look at child welfare for a moment, one of the most important areas of social work. An inquest into the death of seven-year-old Katelynn Sampson in Toronto has made 173 recommendations, there have been several high profile cases as you know in British Columbia, as well as other parts of the country. They lead to reports and recommendations but children and teens in care, of course, are under the watch of social workers and they continue to die in this country. Is the system failing?

JOHN MAYR: The system is set up almost to fail and there are differences in different provinces and jurisdictions, but I’ll speak for British Columbia where certain social workers don't have to be registered or regulated by the college. The law exempts them from standards and affects and some of those social workers would work for the provincial government, the federal government—

AMT: And so you're saying they're the problem?

JOHN MAYR: It's one of the challenges.

DEENA MANDELL: Sometimes clients need to be protected from social workers. There are social workers who do things that are unethical and are harmful to clients and I think that has to be regulated and dealt with, but my issue isn't those few. I'm worried about the systemic issues in which social workers in order to act in the best interests of their clients, really need to do much more and on a larger scale often.

AMT: Well, John, let me ask you, is there a conflict between having regulations in social work to protect clients and saying social workers have a duty to go beyond the law?

JOHN MAYR: Yes, because the construct of professional regulation is that social workers must abide by the law, so there's a difference between the edges of the law and being entirely outside of the law. In Canada of course, we are thankfully living in a democracy, but we also abide by the rule of law because one of the most important things for professions to have with not only their clients but, society in the public is trust. And we have professions that violate the law, we violate that trust equation.

AMT: So how do social workers best work on behalf of their clients, John Mayr?

JOHN MAYR: They advocate. There's lots of leeway within the broader social justice for social workers to work; to change society. I think if we look at the recent election in Alberta and the Alberta government, there are a number of social workers who have been elected to the governing party and I would suggest to you that they actually have the best opportunity to drive fundamental societal change and social justice issues, not only in that province, but to set the models for others as well.

AMY: Deena Mandell, how can social workers separate the fight for social justice from politics, or should they?

DEENA MANDELL: Oh, I don't think you can. I'm trying to imagine how one could do that. Social justice is about politics as far as I'm concerned. As long as we represent a system that may not be so progressive and where the less than progressive policies and funding have affected the services we can offer, we end up being dispensers of technical services that are sometimes kind of mean spirited instead of really standing back and saying, this isn't okay, I'm not going to uphold something like this. So, going into politics would be one way to do it.

AMT: But you also seem to be saying you should be taking to the streets at times.

DEENA MANDELL: Yes.

AMT: Like literally taking to the streets.

DEENA MANDELL: Oh, literally, yes.

AMT: John Mayr, what do you think?

JOHN MAYR: Well, I'd suggest that taking to the streets is an ineffective method currently and I was really struck by the recent interview with Melinda Gates from the Gates Foundation. I wonder if this is the new face of radical activism because some of the work that they are doing is having fundamental and significant change for the most vulnerable people on the planet earth. We as society, have seen a shift from more fair systems going back to the Fifties and Sixties, to the growth in free trade agreements, which tend to be super judicial agreements that there are no appeals to, and those are the things that affect society and I don't think taking to the streets would have any effect on the government who signed those.

AMT: Deena, do you agree with John when he says social workers can make the biggest change from within the political system?

DEENA MANDELL: What I agree with very much is John saying that in the globalized context, there's not a lot we can change in anything anymore. But I think that drawing attention to things or refusing to carry out unreasonable policies, for example around First Nations peoples or people who are receiving social services, the lack of mental health services, it's our job to draw attention to this and make it clear it's not okay. If we quietly do our jobs, we become complicit in that.

AMT: So what would you want to see, Deena Mandell, amongst social workers tomorrow on the big issues facing Canada that social workers grapple with? What would you want to see change?

DEENA MANDELL: I would want to see a demand for funding that allows people to give the kind of service we used to be able to give many decades ago; where there were enough social workers to look at the whole context of people's lives. On the other hand, I think we have to really challenge what's being done in First Nations communities to push for not just person by person health but for a much larger communal and institutional response. I think that we have to recognize that we work for a system and the system has to change if we're going to fulfill the mandate to work for social justice.

AMT: We have to leave it there, thank you both of you.

GUESTS: Thank you.

AMT: Deena Mandell, professor of graduate social work at Wilfrid Laurier University, co-editor of Subversive Action: Extralegal Practices for Social Justice. She's in Kitchener, Ontario. John Mayr is the registrar and CEO of the BC College of Social Workers. He is also the president of the Canadian Council of Social Work Regulators. He's in Vancouver. We want to hear from you on this. How far should social workers go in the name of social justice? You can tweet us @thecurrentcbc, post on our Facebook page or email us by clicking on contact cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you missed the conversation with Melinda Gates that John referred to, you can find that on our site as well cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now earlier, I was speaking to wildlife filmmaker, John Aitchison about how and why he captures animals on film. The animals do not always cooperate and reveal themselves sometimes he spends weeks even months waiting for the right moment. So we'll give today's last word to John Aitchison and his story of the elusive Yukon lynx. I'm Anna maria Tremonti, thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

It was a particularly good year for lynx. So, we were trying to find a mom with her young towards the end of the time when the young were just about to leave her and go off on their own, which in this big forest in the Yukon Territory in the snow, is quite difficult. Statistically, you can't move around very easily or make a lot of noise. We had an expert tracker with us who was good at finding lynx but we couldn't follow them without making an enormous amount of noise. He had to leave and a man called Thomas Joe, who is a local man, there all his life, said he thought he could probably find us a lynx, and he took me on a long walk through a trail pointing out the tracks of everything that had walked there; of wolverines and wolves and lynx, and he found the right place. He found an intersection where there was another track and he said that the lynx like to walk on compacted snow, not on the soft stuff, because it was quieter, and so by this intersection he put up a bag with some dried fish in it to just give the lynx enough to just smell and bring it a little bit closer. And we waited there and he was absolutely right about where to be and when as well. He said it would be about four o'clock, and you know about four o'clock, this female lynx came along exactly the track he had said and she looked at us and I filmed her as she walked past. She didn't have kittens and we didn't get enough film to make a whole sequence. We had to come home on a certain date, and then of course they turned up the day after we left, the mom and the kits and spent a couple of days near a house, the people who'd been helping us.

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May 18, 2016 full episode transcript

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