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The Current Transcript for September 20, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I don't like it getting older and I certainly don't like living alone. I can have two or three days in the middle of the week when I don't see anybody at all.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It's becoming a familiar lament—isolated, perhaps not as mobile as before, a spouse or many in a close circle of friends dying—many older people are painfully lonely. So much so that some are calling it a public health crisis that can affect everything from a person's mental health to their immune system. New research in Canada shows elderly immigrants face crushing loneliness at a higher rate than others their age and overall as many as 1.4 million elderly Canadians report feeling lonely. In an hour we'll hear of the efforts to confront this. Also today, drawn to Trump—

SOUNDCLIP

Everything about him was so ridiculous. He was kind of Daffy Duck reborn, both in his mannerisms and his self-regard. I just drafted him as a character.

AMT: Cartoonist and satirist Garry Trudeau began including Donald Trump in his Doonesbury comic strip 30 years ago when the now US Republican presidential candidate was merely a larger-than-life New York businessman with a big yacht. His early portrayal turned out to be prophetic on the political front. After sketching Trump for decades, Garry Trudeau has some “yuge” opinions. We'll hear from him in half an hour. But we begin with the juxtaposition of events in Syria, the UN and Canada. Yesterday's devastating attack on a humanitarian aid convoy in Syria comes as world leaders meet at a UN summit, as Canada announces more aid, but also as millions in charitable donations from Canadian sponsorship groups remains frozen with the families they hope to welcome stuck in refugee camps, caught in the system. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Frustrated sponsorship groups call on government for more resources to settle refugees

Guests: John Wright, Anneke Smit, John McCallum

SOUNDCLIP

This is the warehouse of the Syrian Crescent. Abroad this house were more than 20 vehicles, 20 trucks full of food. Full of food and flour and medicine and Pampers and blankets. The UN, the refugee agency.

AMT: While the voice of a member of the White Helmets that the Syrian civilian volunteers describing the aftermath of what he says was an air attack against a UN aid convoy yesterday with the Red Crescent, where 18 of 31 trucks carrying wheat, winter clothes and medical supplies were destroyed. That attack took place in the town of Orum al-Kubra which is west of Aleppo, hours after the Syrian army declared a US-Russia brokered truce over, according to the BBC. A resident of Aleppo also described the BBC how the ceasefire ended there after a few days of calm.

SOUNDCLIP

It happened without any warning. Two helicopters and there’s a war plane in our skies. Then we heard the bombing of cluster bombs, rockets. I heard mortars. And you can hear now the shelling.

AMT: And all of that was happening as world leaders gathered in New York for a UN summit with the Syrian war and the plight of its civilians on the agenda.

SOUNDCLIP

We have a responsibility, as all countries do, to do more to help solve the global refugee and migration crisis. Now is the time to develop new approaches to this challenge so that we can better help those who have left their homes behind in search of safety and opportunity. Now is the time for each of us to consider what more we can contribute.

AMT: Well, that is the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the UN yesterday. He has been lauded and applauded for his government's approach to resettling Syrian refugees. Thirty-one thousand Syrian refugees have been welcomed to Canada in the past year. That's a program that has been popular internationally and at home, with thousands of private citizens banding together to sponsor refugees. But despite the attention to this and despite new Liberal government funding for refugees including a 10 per cent boost of the foreign aid budget, we are hearing from members of private sponsor groups who say the refugees they have been waiting for are still in limbo. John Wright is a member of one such group. He is the co-chair of the St. Alban’s refugee sponsorship team. He joins us from Ottawa. Hi, Mr. Wright.

JOHN WRIGHT: Good morning.

AMT: When did you first find out your group had been matched with a refugee family?

JOHN WRIGHT: Well, it was late January this year and we were told that they would certainly arrive before the end of February.

AMT: And where are they?

JOHN WRIGHT: Well, somewhere in Lebanon. We fear in a camp, but we know nothing more than that.

AMT: So when you were told they were going to arrive, what preparations did you make?

JOHN WRIGHT: Well, we kicked into gear pretty quickly. We rented a home—top floor of a bungalow— and furnished it, because at that time, if you'll recall last winter that there was a lot of buzz that accommodation is very difficult to find and we were hearing stories that people had as little as 24 hours notice that the family would be arriving by air. So we thought we'd better be prepared. And then there was no word. They simply didn't show up. It was only a couple of months later that we—with inquiries—were told that they'd been delayed.

AMT: And you know why they were delayed?

JOHN WRIGHT: We have no idea.

AMT: Okay. You don't know if it was security or something benign?

JOHN WRIGHT: Yeah. No. You know it could be as simple as a spelling mistake or simple papers or you know maybe something that should be taken seriously. We have no idea.

AMT: You rented a place for them. Who was paying for it?

JOHN WRIGHT: Well, we had fundraised the previous fall and we were paying for that out of our funds. Luckily after only two months of paying rent, we did manage to find another group who took over the lease and the landlord was very accommodating that way. But yeah, we—it cost us a fair bit and that was hard to kind of defend to those who would had given.

AMT: Now you were offered a substitute family, were you?

JOHN WRIGHT: Yes, we have been and we're watching for that. But we’ll happily take someone else.

AMT: So they haven't arrived either, the substitute family.

JOHN WRIGHT: No. It’s—we're back in queue and once a week, a list comes out and you basically have to kind of bid on them. It took us months. Often we missed by minutes. It was very competitive to try and secure a family.

AMT: Competitive because so many other people wanted to do it.

JOHN WRIGHT: So many other private groups. And you know so we were sitting there with a furnished home, quilts and toys on the beds waiting for children and wondering why then wouldn't they match us with a government sponsored family. You know someone who was already in the country.

AMT: What did they say about that?

JOHN WRIGHT: Well, we didn't get far with that.

AMT: Okay. And you have since sponsored a second family, am I right?

JOHN WRIGHT: Yes, we have. About five weeks ago they arrived and this time, we had about five days notice. We managed to get accommodation and furnish it pretty much completely in that time. And they're doing really well. We've got most of the paperwork, they've got ID and health cards and the rest. The children have started school. So that's going very well and you know it's really gratifying.

AMT: Okay. So your group has managed to kick in but you're still waiting for the other family.

JOHN WRIGHT: That's right. Yeah.

AMT: Okay. John Wright, thank you for speaking with me.

JOHN WRIGHT: Okay. Good morning. Thanks.

AMT: That's John Wright, co-chair of the St. Alban’s refugee sponsorship team. He's in our Ottawa studio. He's not alone in waiting for Syrian refugee families in the resettlement process. Anneke Smit is on the steering committee of Canada4Refugees. That's a national organization that is advocating on behalf of citizen refugee sponsorship groups. She's also an associate professor of law at the University of Windsor and Anneke Smit joins us from our Windsor, Ontario studio. Hello.

ANNEKE SMIT: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: How typical is the story you just heard from John Wright?

ANNEKE SMIT: Very typical in many ways. The numbers are very hard to solidify but from what we were able to gather and sort of cobble together, it would appear that there are thousands of groups that are in a similar situation.

AMT: And what is causing the delay?

ANNEKE SMIT: A number of things. What Mr. Wright has described is going through what’s called the BVOR or the blended visa office referral process. That's one stream of sort of quasi-private sponsorship that the government has made available, where the sponsor groups sort of puts themselves forward and raises the money and has the group together and then the government, as he described actually, has a list that they supply names to. There could be any number of delays there. I mean he's mentioned a question of security but even just in the general sort of processing of files, both there and then also in the more sort of peer private sponsorship stream where folks in Canada are actually coming together to sponsor a particular group of refugees that could be some Syrians, for example, who have family members in Canada already and are aware and the group is aware of them through that group or other ways in which the families have kind of have found out about these groups. In both of those cases, there are bottlenecks along the way in processing. Everything from sort of processing in Winnipeg to certainly what we've heard now over these last months is that massive scale back of processing in the region. And then there seems to be a major bottleneck as well with the International Organization for Migration who actually processes the travel or takes care of the travel of those refugees to Canada. And we understand that there are thousands travel-ready who are stuck in that in that bottleneck right now as well.

AMT: So you're finding a bureaucratic bottleneck.

ANNEKE SMIT: That seems to be the case. I mean to us it seems that much of this could be solved by simply ramping up the resources which had been allocated months ago. You know I think we can't lose sight of what a massive job has been done here by our government and our Canadian citizens. But the job is not done and so I think the resources need to go back to the region, back to Winnipeg and probably to IOM as well.

AMT: Well, when you say resources, what does that mean? Like people who are actually doing the work were cut back, laid off? What does that mean, resources?

ANNEKE SMIT: We understand that it was sort of all systems go everything. I mean I've seen this happen myself. I worked with Citizenship and Immigration Canada after the Kosovo crisis. I saw what a massive undertaking that was and that was a much smaller operation. I understand that sort of all resources possible were put in the region in the early days to get that initial—

AMT: Again, resources is what? Resources is people doing the work, right? They don’t have as many people.

ANNEKE SMIT: Yes. Yes.

AMT: Okay. I just—that’s—

ANNEKE SMIT: They’re people and the money to go with that, obviously.

AMT: Right. Okay. The money to hire people to send them to do that kind of work.

ANNEKE SMIT: Mhm.

AMT: So as you look at all of this, a whole bunch of sponsorship groups put a lot of money on the table to bring people. Where’s that money?

ANNEKE SMIT: Sitting in trust at the moment.

AMT: How much is there?

ANNEKE SMIT: We estimate something in the neighborhood of $25 million across the country.

AMT: And it’s essentially frozen in trust waiting for those people.

ANNEKE SMIT: It can't be used except for the purposes for which it was raised, which is to sponsor these families. So yes.

AMT: Okay. And what's your reaction to that?

ANNEKE SMIT: It's a wasted opportunity to my mind. It's a wasted opportunity as far as the resources that have been, that the money that's been raised as far as the human power that's come together and the goodwill. A lot of the people who've been involved in the resettlement efforts this time around were also involved with the Vietnamese resettlement in the late seventies. That goodwill and the sort of feeling of having done good for people who needed it at that time I think has spilled over and has really infused the process this time. I think there's a real danger—both that the money is being wasted or being you know these issues of having to pay for apartments that are sitting empty, things like that—but also that we're losing the capacity. We're losing the possibility of being able to do this again when it's not the Syrians but someone else. We're losing the capacity to give in that way. So I do worry a lot about that.

AMT: Has the government said that government sponsored refugees could be paired with private sponsorship groups? Because there are people here who don't have like a group waiting to help them navigate this, right?

ANNEKE SMIT: Yeah. There is the separate stream of government assisted refugees. There are those who would suggest that that would be something to move forward. And I think certainly there have been informal instances of that, where you know in my own community in Windsor, people have stepped up in all kinds of ways even if they're not forming a sponsor group. They're given all kinds of support to the hundreds of government assisted refugees from Syria who have arrived in our community. There are problems from a refugee policy perspective on that. I think keeping the streams separate—there are a lot of reasons for that—one of which is that the principles they call additionality, the idea that privately sponsored refugees should really be above and beyond what government targets are and so that if a government is committed to 25,000, we want to make sure that we can hold the government to that in a particular year and not have that reliant on whether private citizens are able to come forward. So I think as a legacy, we have to be careful about those moves.

AMT: When the government announced yesterday it’s increasing its budget for resettlement of Syrian refugees by 10 per cent, how far does that go in addressing your concerns?

ANNEKE SMIT: Well, as I understood it, most of that money is to stay in the region and I think that's important. There's all kinds of humanitarian assistance and I know the prime minister talked about education being one place. You know the family that we're sponsoring, there's a seven-year-old boy in that family and he hasn't been to school in some time. He did some informal work with UNHCR with a high commissioner for refugees over the summer to study a bit but that's it. And that's that story is far from unique. So I think it's great that we're funneling money in. I think there are other conversations we have to have about the larger refugee system and there is some sort of bigger thinking proposals on the table as far as where that takes us in the future. But at the moment, I think we need the people back in the region. We need the processing taking place in Winnipeg and we need support for IOM. Or if IOM can't do the transport to get these folks here, then we need military planes again. We've done it before and there's no reason why we can't do it now.

AMT: So it's up to the government to either military planes or charter plane? That’s what you want?

ANNEKE SMIT: That’s right. Or funding into IOM so that they can do the work if that’s seen as the better way. But one way or the other, it just doesn't make any sense to have the money sitting there, the people sitting here ready to help and folks languishing. And I think Mr. Wright pointed to an important point here too, which is the question of transparency. It's not just about doing the work but it's about letting people know what are reasonable expectations. So that if a family, if the sponsors here are told a month is when you're likely to see the family and if the family is led to understand that they'll be leaving Lebanon or Jordan or wherever they are within that time, then psychologically there's something different that goes on there. If they know it’s going to be a couple of years then they need to be able to live with that and make plans.

AMT: Okay. Well, I have the minister waiting in the wings so we'll put some of this to him. Anneke Smit, thank you.

ANNEKE SMIT: Thank you so much, Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Anneke Smit. She is on the steering committee of Canada4Refugees, an associate professor of law at the University of Windsor. She joined us from Windsor, Ontario. Well John McCallum is Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. He is joining us from New York. Hi, Mr. McCallum.

JOHN MCCALLUM: Good morning.

AMT: How do you respond to the concerns that these sponsorship groups have $25 million frozen, waiting to help all these refugees who have arrived?

JOHN MCCALLUM: Well, it's unfortunate and I regret it. The issue is that we have a capacity for 300,000 immigrants in this year and I have already announced that all of those who had applications in by March 31st for privately sponsored refugees would get their refugees by the end of this year or early next year. There have also been some glitches that we don't control, like difficulty in getting exit permits out of Turkey. But I would say that these problems are definitely problems but they reflect the generosity of Canadians. And just in an hour from now, I'm going to be with George Soros and Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR, to announce a three way initiative to export our privately sponsored refugees to the world because the world is in a huge refugee crisis right now and the world would be miles ahead if they could bring in refugees sponsored by families as we do, rather than have refugees come in uninvited or illegally. And so while there are certainly issues that have just been discussed on your show and while I regret the fact that people have to wait, it's still a terrific model in which the world has expressed a lot of interest. We want to export it to the world. Thirteen countries have already expressed an interest in following our model and with the help of George Soros and the UNHCR, we are going to have a big three party initiative to encourage other countries to adopt this system.

AMT: To adopt the private sponsorship and you'll tell them—you'll walk them through how that works here. The nitty gritty of that.

JOHN MCCALLUM: Exactly. We will have training modules to tell them how to do it, tell them the glitches like the ones we've just discussed but more importantly, the positive point that this is a way where we can really welcome refugees by bringing them into Canadian families and religious groups and others, as in our privately sponsored refugee system. And the world hasn't really caught on to this yet. The UK is already beginning to implement it, Australia to a degree but there are many other countries with an interest who have not yet done it. And there's virtually no crisis in the world today more pressing than the refugee crisis. So I think this could make a significant contribution.

AMT: What was your reaction when you heard of the strikes yesterday on that humanitarian aid convoy?

JOHN MCCALLUM: Well, that's terrible. This is a problem that is not only solved by peaceful countries like Canada bringing in refugees. We have to end the war in Syria. That is one part of the mission that is not easy, but that is the source of a lot of these challenges. We also have to step up aid to the front line countries like Jordan and Lebanon who are bearing the brunt of this. So we have to operate on three fronts: bring in refugees ourselves, give more support to the front line countries and do what we can to end the war in Syria.

AMT: I want to ask you about the glitches that you have acknowledged. What specifically would you tell countries wanting to use the model that your government brought in? What will you admit to that has gone wrong then? What are those glitches that you would tell them to be wary of and how will you fix them now?

JOHN MCCALLUM: Well, I think the basic model works very well. It did with the Vietnamese boat people and it has with the Syrian situation not withstanding these challenges. So I would basically tell them how it works, how you get the families or the church groups or religious groups to do the individual sponsorships. And I would also make sure that we have the resources in place to carry it out more effectively. In this particular case, there have been families waiting longer than we would like. So I would explain to other countries that it's important to respond quickly to those who are being generous.

AMT: Will you consider using military planes or chartered planes to get some of those refugees here?

JOHN MCCALLUM: Well, this is something we are looking at. The answer is not yes or not no. At this time, we are looking at different options to try to extract refugees from difficult places. There are a number of difficult places in the world where it's dangerous for our own agents to go in. And so we are looking at other options that could be used to address that problem.

AMT: Did you cut back on the workers who process these claims?

JOHN MCCALLUM: We had a huge blitz to bring in the 25,000 by the end of February and now we have fewer people working on this issue now that the big numbers have come in. But we are having many people still working to bring in the remaining privately sponsored refugees. And I've made the commitment that all those who applied by March 31^st would have their refugees by the end of this year or early next year and that commitment stands. Along the way, there are always problems, issues that we don't control, like the problem of getting exit permits out of Turkey.

AMT: Okay. Right. We have to leave it there. John McCallum, thank you.

JOHN MCCALLUM: Thank you very much. Bye.

AMT: Goodbye. John McCallum, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship. He joined us from New York. Stay with us. The news is next. Let us know what you're thinking as you listened to him. This is The Current.

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Doonesbury cartoonist on why he's drawn to Trump's 'unthinkable' character

Guests: Garry Trudeau

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the loneliness epidemic. As baby boomers age and sadly lose their spouses, loneliness is on the rise in Canada. Research suggests that the experience of loneliness can be as bad for your health as smoking or obesity. That story in half an hour. But first, drawing the hair and the ire of Donald Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: One last quick question: can you laugh with the Doonesbury cartoons about the quality of the solid gold sinks in your yacht?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, everybody tells me I'm supposed to be honoured by that. I'm not sure if it's an honour or not but he certainly—someday maybe he’s going to be able to find another topic. But I certainly seem to be in a lot of his cartoons. I'm not sure if they're good, bad or indifferent but I guess I'm supposed to be honoured.

VOICE 1: Donald Trump, thanks very much for coming tonight.

DONALD TRUMP: You have a good time.

AMT: Wow, from way back in 1988, that's Donald Trump being asked about his frequent appearances in the Doonesbury comic strip. Of course, on a week like this when the Republican presidential nominee has called for the profiling of Muslims in the wake of a bomb attack, there may be little about him to make you want to laugh, but it is that brashness and bullishness about Mr. Trump—love it or hate it—that Garry Trudeau has been capturing in his comic strip for all those years. If you are only glancingly familiar with Doonesbury, you know it's a Pulitzer Prize-winning politically charged strip that often engages the top news headlines, although Donald Trump has been showing up in Doonesbury since well before he was headline news. Now Garry Trudeau has just released a compilation of his Trump-related cartoons. And you can see a sample of them on our Facebook page or on our www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. That book is called Yuge! That would be Y-U-G-E. And Garry Trudeau is in New York City. Hello. Welcome.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, thank you so much.

AMT: Do you remember hearing that clip way back?

GARRY TRUDEAU: I did. It was just recently shown again here in the US and you know it rang a bell. I think I did see it at the time but it was just one of many, many comments he made about the strip in the early days. And initially, his position was that he was honoured. That didn't last very long. Soon thereafter, he started trashing me in the tabloids.

AMT: Were you trying to honour him?

GARRY TRUDEAU: [Laughs] No and I don't—I've never really understood why he was confused on that score. There was nothing remotely flattering about how I was depicting him. When I introduce a local figure, as Donald Trump was in the eighties initially—as the young tycoon in New York City—I try not to lard up the strip with too much exposition. It doesn't make for good comedy to have to explain who somebody is. But by the fall of 1987, he and his imaginary press agents had gotten him on a number of magazine covers and I figured by then he had a you know or either did or would be—have a national profile and so that's—you know at that time, I thought it was appropriate to drop him into a strip that had a national audience.

AMT: How is he different from other characters in Doonesbury?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, he's not any different from the other characters in Doonesbury, in the sense that I kind of lifted him from real life and dropped him in. And the book shows him interacting with a good dozen of the regular characters, including Duke and Honey and JJ and others. And there was really no reason to create a parody of him. He already was a walking talking parody. He was—you know I've often described him as a living breathing tune that you know you could just take out of the box and stand him up and march him into the strip because everything about him was so ridiculous. He was kind of Daffy Duck reborn, both in his mannerisms and his self-regard. And so the art was not of parody but it was simply of reconfiguring the things he said in a way for comic effect, you know that made sense within the Doonesbury universe. I just drafted him as a character and I'd never done that before and haven't done it since. You know most political figures I represent off stage or in a symbol occasionally do an actual caricature but the physicality of Trump was just so unmissable and the drawing of Trump—well, initially it wasn't that interesting to me—it very quickly did become. You have to remember, I go all the way back to when Trump had brown hair and it wasn't as much of an event. But then, you know as the years went by, he turned into this aging strawberry blonde and then you know set his hair on fire to run for president and now to draw him is an experience. I describe it as a journey, not a destination because you can never really reverse engineer what he's created up there.

AMT: It is interesting to see your drawings of him over the decades and how he changes physically and you know I've got the compilation here. But how often would he show up in the regular things as the years went by?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, he was kind of generating his own appearances, to the degree to which I was reacting to what he was doing at that point. So when he opened Trump University, boom. You just couldn't stay away from that, so I had Zonker enroll right away. And then same thing with The Apprentice and the same thing when he attacked the president in 2012 with the libel that he was born in Africa. All these things he initiated and then I just incorporated into storylines in the strip. So there was no sort of pattern to it. I never felt like I had to go back to him. It's just that when he emerged with something particularly ludicrous, then I would try to react to it.

AMT: Now back in 1987, he was musing about running for president in the strip, in the comic strip. How did you know?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, in 1987, in the fall of 1987, he set up a trial balloon. He took out a full page ad in three US papers: the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Full page ads that were basically essay-like word salads describing the US's position in the world. At that time, the bête noire was Japan, at least for him it was, not China. And he informed us all that the world was laughing at us and presumably has been laughing at us ever since for our silly trade policies. So that was a serious enough subject so that it had the intended effect of making people wonder whether he might be setting himself up for a presidential run. What it did guarantee is a lot of attention. And you know I'm guilty of that as well. [laughs] I couldn't stay away from it. You know the grandiosity of it was so extraordinary that it would have been comedy malpractice to stay away from it.

AMT: Now some pundits have speculated that he was more interested in running for president than actually being president. Well, what do you think?

GARRY TRUDEAU: I thought that he would run long enough to be very disruptive and to use up all the oxygen and then after he had maximized the promotional value of that effort, that he would drop out. But like everybody else, I was completely wrong. [laughs] I had no idea he would get the traction he did.

AMT: And do you think he did? Do you think he surprised himself?

GARRY TRUDEAU: I think he surprised himself to some degree. And I think he was prepared to drop out. I think you know he would have called the system rigged a little earlier and he would have found some way to rationalize if the electorate hadn't gone along with this con.

AMT: You mentioned the hair. Over 30 years though, as you've been watching and drawing him, have you seen an evolution in his character?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Not really. I mean yes, the physical traits, I mean the man’s aged over 30 years. I have too. But he has turned into this kind of hulking gilded bloat. And you know that makes him more and more difficult to stay away from just as an artist. But in terms of his personality, I think what the book documents is that very little has changed. You know the shiny things that get his attention have changed but the underlying personality disorder has been remarkably stable through the years. Also his utterly infantile use of language has remained remarkably the same. There’s been zero growth I think since the fifth grade. I don't know how he's being looked at up in Canada, but here we're all seriously suffering from a kind of Trump derangement syndrome. You know he uses up so much of the oxygen and it's like having you know a big air horn installed in your head and you just can't get away from it. And so you know there's plenty for me to write about. The ideas are lined up like boxcars in my brain. But you know I have other things to write about too. It's just hard to concentrate on them. [laughs]

AMT: And you know despite all of that, he actually—he has a lot of supporters. He has people who say that obviously he's tapped into people who feel totally disconnected from the people who represent them politically. He speaks to something that's going on in American society. What have you thought about that?

GARRY TRUDEAU: That's absolutely right, that there is this struggle that he's identified and speaks to. And I think the thing that mystifies me and distresses me the most is the con. That the people who love Trump don't really seem to understand that he doesn't love them back. He has nothing in common with them. As a kind of sociopath, which I would argue he is, he really doesn't feel their pain and never has, never will. That's just not part of his nature. He has yet to sit down you know with the family across the kitchen table and say what are you thinking? What are your problems? Why are you hurting? He has zero interest in that. In fact, he said from the podium one day, he said you know I could talk to just a couple of people but why do that when I can you know have one of these rallies? So he doesn't really like these folks in anything other than the aggregate of 12,000, 10,000 people at a time. Then he can leave the stage and you know with a squirt of Purell, he can get back on his plane and head back to Manhattan and sleep in silk sheets.

AMT: Squirt of Purell—what’s that about?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Oh, Purell is hand sanitizer. [laughs]

AMT: He’s a germaphobe, isn’t he?

GARRY TRUDEAU: He’s germaphobic, yeah. [laughs]

AMT: He won't shake hands.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, he's disciplined himself to now and he'll take babies—which I'm sure is like horrible for him—but he sees there's value in that.

AMT: You know you captured some of this. The strip is dated here in the book. It's September 19^th, 1987. Somebody interviewing him. Mr. Trump is a [unintelligible] of luxury condos and casinos. Do you think you'd have any rapport with all the voters of modest means? And he says are you kidding? I've spent my whole life working with people of modest means. And he's asked in what capacity, sir? And he answers: evicting them. I've seen how these people live. I couldn't stop laughing.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, that's how he first came to public attention. It was a series of lawsuits that the feds brought against him for discrimination. And you know he and his father were you know quite committed to having the right kind of people in their buildings. And young Donald used to follow Fred around—his father around—and you know these values were transmitted pretty early. And then there were other suits after that in the late seventies. So he's always been in court. And in part because of you know these values.

AMT: Well, and we know from a New York Times investigative piece that there was a code for black Americans who were looking to rent in a Trump building.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, yeah. They would attach a piece of paper to the lease application with the letter C on it—C for coloured. That made sure that the application never jumped out of the file, the bottom of the file cabinet.

AMT: I've got a clip here I want to play for you. It's become quite notorious. This is Donald Trump last year. He's mocking a reporter by the name of Serge Kovaleski, who has a physical condition that affects his hands. Listen to this.

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DONALD TRUMP: Poor guy. You got to see this guy: “Oh, I don't know what I said. I don't remember. He’s going like, I don't remember. Oh, maybe that's what I said.” This is 14 years ago. He still—they didn’t do a retraction.

AMT: Garry Trudeau, do you remember that clip? What were you thinking when you saw that clip?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, of course, that clip has gotten a lot of play and it plays you know a starring role in one of Secretary Clinton's ads. It’s gotten a lot of national attention. I saw it at the time. It just—you know I do think there are some people who—and there's a reason why they're using it—I think there's some people who’d say that is so extraordinary in itss lack of humanity and its lack of empathy that the thought of having you know someone capable of that in the White House is just not acceptable. But what’s stunning is how you know because these things do get circulated—it’s not like nobody sees them—but how much his admirers and voters are willing to forgive.

AMT: Why would he do that?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Why would he make fun of the reporter? Because he was angry with the reporter. And so when you're angry, you say the thing that you think might be the most hurtful.

AMT: And he didn't think that—he doesn't think anyone would call him on things, obviously.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, maybe on some level he understands they will but he doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him. I think to some degree, he thinks any attention is good attention and it's only because his family has tried to disabuse him of that notion that he's made any adjustments at all.

AMT: You know it's interesting. I spent a fair bit of time in the States this summer just talking to people about what they thought of the whole campaign and what they were thinking politically. A lot of people brought that up with me and then I see that there's a poll by Bloomberg that shows that that characterization of that reporter has bothered Americans the most.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Mhm.

AMT: Are you surprised?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Not at all. That certainly resonates with me. I would say the second most was this attack of the Khan family, the family that lost the son in Iraq. That bothered a lot of people as well.

AMT: And why is that? Because he went after regular people, he didn't go after political opponents?

GARRY TRUDEAU: He went after such an admirable family and a gold star family. Their son had perished fighting—their Muslim son—had perished fighting for this country because his country had sent him over there and he was doing his duty. And he died selflessly protecting his men, which is just what an officer should be doing out in the field. And everything about them was admirable. He should have stayed a mile away from it.

AMT: He also called Hillary Clinton a bigot. What did you think of that?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, my wife has this theory that whenever he hears something that feels hurtful or you know difficult to process, he simply shoots it back at her so that if someone says temperamentally he's unfit, he says no, no, she's temperamentally unfit. And this is another case where he's called a bigot so I'll call her a bigot. And I think what he does—I think he thinks it clouds the issue. I mean to the degree to which he thinks these things through. That it clouds the issue—I mean no one could be further from a bigot than Hillary Clinton so it doesn't really resonate. But maybe what it does is undercut the label when it's applied to him. It's kind of a playground tactic. When I was growing up, there was a—you know if someone insulted you, it says you know I'm rubber, you're glue, it just bounces off me and sticks to you or the reverse of that.

AMT: I remember that saying, yeah.

GARRY TRUDEAU: And I think that's what he does, is he takes whatever insult comes his way and if it feels as if it might be effective, he'll just bounce it back at you know wherever it's coming from.

AMT: And in many ways, he's master of the public insults and he's insulted you for years. What did he call you?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, it's all there on the back of the book. That's a curated collection of blurbs of his attacks on me. In the beginning, as you played with that clip earlier in our conversation, he pretended that he was honoured. And then that no longer became tenable. And so it sort of degenerated in the weeks and months and years that followed. So by the end, he was calling me a total loser and a third-rate talent and all kinds of childish insults that he uses as a matter of routine.

AMT: Well, in fact, on the blurb about you on the back of the book, you have quoted him. I'll just read it here because it's not very long. Garry Trudeau is the “sleazeball” third-rate talent who draws the “overrated comic strip Doonesbury” which “very few people read.” And it says he lives in New York City with his wife Jane Pauley who has “far more talent than he has.”

GARRY TRUDEAU: Yeah, it's kind of fun putting together an author's bio using his language. [laughs]

AMT: The ultimate swipe, I guess, huh?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Yeah.

AMT: Have you met Donald Trump face to face?

GARRY TRUDEAU: I haven’t. I've only—I've observed him in the wild a few times, most recently up in New Hampshire and where I was absolutely captivated by the back of his head. I'd always kind of focused on that golden overhang in the front but the back is just as extraordinary in its own way. It's like a panel of gossamer that's been sort of lacquered in place with a sort of golden slurry. You just can't take your eyes off. The cameras just don't do it justice.

AMT: You just said golden slurry. Okay.

GARRY TRUDEAU: [Laughs]

AMT: When you draw him, you actually show a bald spot. You’re very unkind.

GARRY TRUDEAU: I think—you know and again, it's just from looking up close—I think that panel folds over some you know some skin. The first public argument that he had with his wife that she talked about—Ivanka, his first wife—was over a scalp reduction procedure that he had undergone at—I don't know at her urging—but she had arranged for the doctor and it was apparently very painful and so that was a huge argument that was exhibit A in the divorce proceedings. So you know. I think it's okay to kind of imagine what's there since we’ll never really know. I've often fantasized—if I could unsee it, I'd love to see him step out of a shower because I think some of that hair would go down to his navel—the stuff that shoots out of his temples and then heads west and then doubles back and goes back over the top of his head and curls down over his collar. But as I say, that's something—that's not a memory you'd want to carry around for the rest of your life.

AMT: And I don't know what to say to that. [chuckles] It's interesting though, you know because you will be accused of being an East Coast elite that doesn't understand Donald Trump. What do you say to that?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Well, there are a lot of us and if you look around the commentary generally, you'll find that the Conservative columnists—many of whom I admire and read and read regularly—are just as obsessed with this guy—and not a good way—as I am. There is a kind of uniform disgust and horror that this person could wind up being our president because he's just not serious in the way that we feel. It's like the people who want to vote for him don't really understand what a president does. You know it's not just another entertainer's job. It's not just another lead role. And so anyone who likes to think about public policy you know either professionally or just as a part of their civic duty, has to come to that same conclusion and if that makes us an elite, it's a huge elite. It's an elite of millions and millions of people who just can't bear the thought that he would get anywhere near the White House.

AMT: And if he were to be to be elected—

GARRY TRUDEAU: Please don't say that.

AMT: Who would you blame?

GARRY TRUDEAU: Blame? I don't think I'd blame anybody. You know do you blame people who were conned? You know the people who vote for him are as much victims as we would be. You know do I—I guess you could say the media handed him $4 billion worth of free media played a pretty big role. But I don't think I would search around for someone to blame. I mean we all did it. He speaks the unspeakable. He thinks the unthinkable. And you know I hate to think that we're getting used to it.

AMT: It's fascinating to hear your views and it's really interesting to see your coverage of him over the course of all of those decades. Garry Trudeau, thanks for speaking with me.

GARRY TRUDEAU: Oh, my great pleasure.

AMT: Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury. His new book is called Yuge! 30 years of Doonesbury on Trump. Garry Trudeau joined us from New York City. You can see some of his Trump cartoons by visiting us on Facebook or on our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music]

AMT: Well, stay with us. Coming up next, we're talking about what is now seen as a public health problem—it’s hard to talk about, it's hard to bear—being alone and lonely, especially in the golden years. We will hear some personal stories and some ideas about alleviating the pain of loneliness. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

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Loneliness in Canadian seniors an epidemic, says psychologist

Guests: Sophie Andrews, Ami Rokach, Norah Keating

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

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She passed away at one o'clock in the morning by my side. I couldn't believe it. She’d gone. It was impossible to say goodbye or I love you anymore. For 65 years, we were together all the time. And you realize that there's nobody you can say to, “How about a cup of tea? Have you got some of that cake that was left from yesterday?” There is no way to do it. You get up and you go and make your own cup of tea and that's when you realize that you are alone.

AMT: That is a man named Bob. He is 92 years old and he is sharing his story there for something called the Silver Line. The Silver Line is a 24-hour service that Bob calls sometimes because he's lonely. And that's the point of the Silver Line, it's always there specifically for seniors with someone to speak with if someone's feeling lonely, who just wants to chat. It is a seemingly simple solution to what appears to be a growing problem, part of the United Kingdom's efforts to tackle loneliness as a serious public health issue. In fact, there's research to suggest that loneliness can be as bad for you as smoking or obesity. It's a problem that has begun to receive more attention in Canada as well, as a large portion of our own population—the baby boomers—ages. Sophie Andrews is the CEO of the Silver Line helpline and she joins us from Blackpool, England. Hello.

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Hi there. Hi.

AMT: It's heartbreaking to hear Bob. How typical—

SOPHIE ANDREWS: It is. Bob is—sorry—he’s a great ambassador for us, at 92.

AMT: How typical is that story?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Very typical. Bob was married for 65 years, his wife developed Alzheimer’s and then died shortly afterwards. And he says to us he's got a great family, he's got three children. But even the best family in the world you know can't be there all the time and at two o'clock in the morning, he doesn't want to worry his family so hence why he calls us in the middle of the night.

AMT: Why was the helpline started?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: The helpline was started—our founder is a lady called Dame Esther Rantzen, who you may or may not heard of. She used to front up a TV program called That’s Life! in the UK for many years. And she wrote in 2012 about her own loneliness in the papers here and she received such a huge response from the public who said as a celebrity, if you can say you’re lonely, that gives us permission to say it too. And I think what she realized was there’s a real stigma in admitting that you feel lonely. One thing she said at the time was she had plenty of people to do something with but nobody to do nothing with, which I think really—it said what a lot people are thinking actually, that even the best TV program in the world is not necessarily funny watching it on your own. And you know it's about sharing experiences with each other. So as a result of that, we launched a pilot just to see something as simple as a 24-hour line for older people would actually be attractive and we were blown away almost from day one by the number of people that called us.

AMT: How many people do call you?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: At the moment, around 1,600 calls a day. We've just taken [unintelligible] call very recently. And the way our service works, we have a 24-hour phone line receiving those calls every day. And we also have Silver Line friends, who are volunteers, who work from their own home, who make weekly friendship calls to the same people. We also have Silver Letters, so we’re going backwards in time, where we have pen pals, volunteers writing to older people brilliant exchanges of letters and finally, we’ve got Silver Circles, which are group calls, where eight to 10 people chat to each other on the phone each week. And one man said to me recently, it's the first time we talked to more than one person in 10 years. We actually take for granted you know just having a conversation with more than one person. So all this is really, really simple but I think you know it's a vital connection for people who might go days without talking to somebody else.

AMT: Right. I mean really, really simple and yet so inaccessible if they can't call. There's no way for them to connect, huh?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Yeah. It's a free service or free for the volunteers to make calls and also free you know for people to call us. We think it's really important that money isn't a barrier and that people don’t feel they have to get off the phone because of the phone bill. But very you know simple idea. I think also it's a generational thing. People like Bob, of 92, are very much a stiff upper lip generation. I suspect 30, 40 year olds today when they become 90, they’ll be a bit more demanding and probably be more likely to talk about feelings. Men, particularly, are quite a hard-to-reach group. You know Bob will have lived through a world war, very stiff upper lip gentleman who doesn't show his family how he feels. So one of the barriers is how do you reach hard-to-reach people? If you go to the community centre and you put your poster up, you're going to reach the people in the community centre who are already out and about. How do you reach—the challenge is how you reach people who don't come out of their own homes.

AMT: And why, why are people lonely?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: I think lots and lots of reasons. I think many people live on their own and do not consider themselves to be lonely. Our experience is it’s not about living on your own necessarily but it's maybe about a significant change in your life. So Bob’s big change was his wife developing Alzheimer’s and then dying. And obviously, bereavement is a big reason. But there’s less obvious reasons. So, loss of mobility can be a huge change for somebody, which means they’ve become lonely. Loss of a driving license—so if you live in a remote area and there’s no public transport and you can no longer drive—suddenly your front door can become a barrier. Ill health or any significant change, I think, can actually mean that people gradually lose confidence and the front door becomes a barrier.

AMT: Some re—

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Technology as well. Sorry, go on.

AMT: No, I was going to say some researchers are calling the level of loneliness an epidemic now. Do you think what you’re hearing classifies as an epidemic?

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Oh, absolutely. I think the stigma of talking about loneliness is an epidemic. As you said in your headlines you report researchers tells us that it's as damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. People lose confidence you know over time, and you know the front door can become a barrier. And equally, technology can mean that we spend less time picking up the phone, talking to family and friends. I think I've been guilty myself of sending a text message rather than ringing my mom or visiting her. E-mail. All forms of communication, like e-mail and text messaging, stop people from perhaps visiting. So we have to be careful technology doesn’t take over. Yeah.

AMT: No and obviously if you're getting 1,600 calls a day, that tells us a lot. Sophie Andrews, thanks for telling me about your program. Thank you.

SOPHIE ANDREWS: Thank you very much for inviting me. Okay. Bye-bye.

AMT: Bye-bye. That's Sophie Andrews. She's the CEO of the Silver Line helpline. She is in Blackpool, England. Well, in Canada some advocates say loneliness in senior citizens is becoming a public health crisis. The group Calgary Seniors works to help people stay independent in their homes for as long as possible. Our Calgary producer Michael O'Halloran went along on a visit with volunteer Dianne Cooper-Ponte to check in on 93-year-old Amy Anderson.

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VOICE 1: Molly. Molly. Molly. Come on. Come on, Molly.

MICHAEL O’HALLORAN: How are you?

DIANNE COOPER-PONTE: Hi, Amy. How are you today?

AMY ANDERSON: Oh, I'm fine today.

DIANNE COOPER-PONTE: So I thought I’d just drop by and we could just chat a little bit about how things are going.

AMY ANDERSON: Well, that would be good because as I don’t get out too much now, since I’ve had eye problems, which does make you more lonely. You can’t read. You can’t drive. You go to a restaurant, you need someone with you to read the menu. And when you shop, you also need someone with you to read your labels to make sure you're not picking up the wrong item. But I go to them all the time. You get tired of that after a while but at least you see people.

MICHAEL O’HALLORAN: But you don't get depressed when you're on your own?

AMY ANDERSON: At times, yes. At times, depressed. At times. When you get my age, you don't have any friends left. They've all passed away. Your relatives are gone. You don't have people that you can phone and chat when you feel a little lonely. And then since I’ve had my vision go on, it’s made it worse because I lost my driver's license. I can't get out. I've been living alone for some time.

MICHAEL O’HALLORAN: Do you have children?

AMY ANDERSON: Yes. There's two of them in the city. And I see them some—yes. And they’ll drive me sometimes but they're also busy so I can't get them all the time. That's the other part of it, that with older people, their children have a life too. They don't like to give up their interests. For different things, [unintelligible] I’ve been totally alone and no one thinks they're going to get old. [laughs]

AMT: Okay. Well, that is Amy Anderson and her story is not unique. According to Stats Can, an estimated 1.4 million seniors report that they feel lonely. Ami Rokach is an instructor in the psychology department at York University, a clinical psychologist who studies loneliness. He's with me in our Toronto studio. Welcome.

AMI ROKACH: Welcome. Good morning.

AMT: What's your response to a story you just heard?

AMI ROKACH: Well, the lady who was talking about what happens to the elderly, where their health is deteriorating and she was commenting on what's happening with our society, where we take the elderly, we put them aside and we're saying we're on the run for our personal goals and success. We don't have much time for you. And even family members, many times, don't have enough time for the elderly.

AMT: And how big a problem is loneliness in senior citizens in Canada then?

AMI ROKACH: It's quite big. Apparently, seniors who are about up to 65 years old say that about five or 10 per cent of the time, they feel occasionally lonely, whereas people who are 80 years and older say that up to 80 per cent of the time, they feel lonely. So it's a major problem.

AMT: And as we heard in that clip, their world just gets smaller, right? Because they're not able to do as many things and it just gets smaller if people don't intercede and engage—

AMI ROKACH: Their world is getting smaller. Yes, absolutely.

AMT: So we mentioned in the research that loneliness is as big a problem as obesity or smoking. What impact does loneliness have on health?

AMI ROKACH: Well, loneliness actually doesn't directly cause health problems but it's what we call an intervening variable. When people are lonely, there is a host of emotions that they may have: depression, feeling helpless, desperation, feeling unwanted and unappreciated. And that may cause them to neglect their health, to get involved with unhealthy behaviours, to start smoking, drinking and not take their medication, et cetera, et cetera. I was shocked to recently find out that elderly, many elderly people fall and break a leg, for instance. And up to 25 per cent of the elderly who fall and break a leg in the western world die. And that was shocking, that in the 21st century, a quarter of them die.

AMT: Why?

AMI ROKACH: That is all related to loneliness. Those who are not lonely have a much better chance to survive than those who are lonely. And we're talking about other illnesses as well.

AMT: And you have a list of the connections in terms of the things that you look at and the connections to health. So it's depression and—

AMI ROKACH: It’s depression and it's general psychological distress. Hypertension and sleep disturbances were connected to loneliness. Even dementia is worse when people are lonely. Loneliness contributes even to death. It’s that significant.

AMT: And so, you know people can feel lonely at different times in their lives as part of the human condition. What makes someone's loneliness severe enough to affect health?

AMI ROKACH: Okay. That has to do with the length of the time. Loneliness is not measured like other things in terms of severe. But when a person who is lonely occasionally, that is usually seen as part of life. When a person is lonely for a long period of time, then there are all kinds of host of consequences in terms of the feelings that a person has about himself and the feeling that he's not worthy, as well as even though he or she may want very much to be with other people, they start to back off. And part of the problem with loneliness is that it has a stigma, as the lady from the Silver Line was talking about, And I want to quote Susan Schultz, who in ‘76 in the States wrote a book about loneliness and she said, “To be alone is to be different. To be different is to be alone. And to be in the interior of this fatal circle is to be lonely. To be lonely is to have failed.” And the rationale goes like that. If I'm lonely, that’s because—

AMT: There must be something wrong with me.

AMI ROKACH: That’s right.

AMT: Right.

AMI ROKACH: I won't let other people know that because I feel like a loser and no one wants to connect with a loser. So I walk around. I'm lonely, I'm dying for connections and I can't reach out.

AMT: You are actually doing some research with 20-something students and the elderly. What are you up to?

AMI ROKACH: Okay. As we grow up, as I grow up and as other young people grow up, we are usually old, “When you grow up, when you wisen up, when you have experiences, you will understand. You will know how to live your life better.” That's when one segment of the population. Another segment are the elderly who are alone. I thought to myself, how do I bring these two together? And I decided to conduct this study which I termed pearls of wisdom. And I take research assistants, who are university students, and they get to the elderly in institutions, in their homes, with permission from the institutions. And they interview them and they ask them things like what have you done in your life which you are glad you have done? And they start to reflect on their lives. And usually their family members, their friends, are not all that interested in affording them the opportunity to reflect on their life. They're asked what have you done that you regret? What haven't you done, which really worked well for you?

AMT: Right. So in the course of this, they end up having conversations.

AMI ROKACH: Exactly. And the young people are saying to me wow, I never have time for my grandparents and I find the very rich world in the elderly population.

AMT: How long has this been going on?

AMI ROKACH: It's been going on for about a year, both in Israel and here and it will continue.

AMT: And what kind of results do you see, even anecdotally? Like are you at a point where you can say how this is helping?

AMI ROKACH: Oh. Absolutely. I get feedback from the elderly who are saying to me well, the problem is that they came only once. I want to see them again. And sometimes they continued to contact even outside of the study. The younger generation—it's quite amazing—they're saying to me wow, I discovered the new world and that will now make me aware of my grandparents. And now, after I found out from a stranger, I want to find out about my grandparents.

AMT: If they can have that story, what do the grandparents have?

AMI ROKACH: That’s right.

AMT: And it's also that they stop being invisible right, to a certain generation that—

AMI ROKACH: Yes. Yes. That's our biggest problem in society. We put them away. They’re invisible. We simply don't have time.

AMT: And where do you see this research going then, the pearls of wisdom?

AMI ROKACH: Well, eventually I would like to publish a book with the pearls of wisdom from the elderly. And then, I would like to know how the elderly saw those interviews and how it affected them.

AMT: Okay. And I guess a lot of people could learn from that and try variations of that too, even if they're not as scientific as you.

AMI ROKACH: Of course. Yes.

AMT: Thank you for coming in.

AMI ROKACH: Very welcome.

AMT: That is Ami Rokach. He is an instructor at York University’s psychology department. He's also a clinical psychologist and he joined me in our Toronto studio. Well, when it comes to loneliness among older people, the diversity of Canadian society may also contribute here. Norah Keating is a professor of social gerontology at the University of Alberta. She's in Summerland, BC. Hello to you.

NORAH KEATING: Good morning.

AMT: So let's look at your research. You're looking at levels of loneliness in seniors who are immigrants to Canada. Am I right?

NORAH KEATING: Yes.

AMT: And what are you finding?

NORAH KEATING: Well, one of the things I think we've always assumed is that people who are immigrants are lonelier than people who were born in the country. They've come to a new place. They've got to adapt and so on. And given the increasing diversity of our population in Canada, along with a colleague of mine from the Netherlands, we looked at a Statistics Canada National Survey and asked people in Canada who are older adults about their loneliness. And we found that yes, overall, immigrants are lonelier than people born in Canada. These are older immigrants. But if you came from a cultural background where you spoke English or French as your first language and where your culture was similar, there was no difference in your loneliness. The difficulty comes for people who didn't come with the first language of English or French and who grew up in a setting where the cultures and practices and ways of living are very different. Those people were significantly lonelier than native born Canadians.

AMT: So are you essentially saying first of all, what European versus non-European immigrants?

NORAH KEATING: Generally so. Yes. And I think that becomes important given the changing nature of immigrants to Canada. It's something I think we need to be vigilant about, in terms of the long term ways in which people become part of a country where they're living.

AMT: And what about the age at which they arrive?

NORAH KEATING: You know it's a really good question and unfortunately, we don't know the answer to that. One would think that perhaps those who've come as a younger adult will have a longer time to adapt, learn language, become part of a culture. And we just don't know that for sure.

AMT: How about family in all of this?

NORAH KEATING: Well, in some of our other work, we have found—you know like Sophie and Ami have talked about—that your connections with other people are really important. Two things here that I think are especially relevant and certainly resonate with what Sophie said about her interview with Bob. One of those is that loss of a spouse can be a huge blow to people and certainly is related to high levels of loneliness but it’s contact with friends that makes a difference, that actually lowers people's loneliness. Not contact with other family members. So it's good to have them around, but your children and other relatives aren't the ones that really make a big difference in your loneliness. It’s your friends.

AMT: And what about contact with—as we heard Ami talk about—you know 20-somethings and older people sort of the age differences. Does it matter how old the friends are? Does it matter what kind of history there is? Is there an ability to make new friends that would help?

NORAH KEATING: One of the things that Ami mentioned and that we you know are concerned about is that as people get to very, very late in their lives, many of them have lost friends and it's hard to rebuild social networks. So one of the ways we're trying to reduce loneliness of people who've had these kind of losses is to build in new relationships. For some people, the best kind of relationships are with others who've been on the same kind of life path that they have. And who would tend to be similar ages. For some, the vitality of connections with young people really gives them a boost and can be quite important.

AMT: How do the levels of loneliness experienced by senior citizens in Canada compare to those in other countries?

NORAH KEATING: Well, that's a really interesting one. Sophie said something about the people that call into her helpline that I think might be quite apropos here. She talked about a stiff upper lip generation. It turns that overall, older Canadians have relatively low levels of loneliness compared to people in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, for example. And we speculate that part of that is about our geographies in Canada. We're used to you know having lots of separation from others. We come from a kind of immigrant-having-to-make-do background. But Canadians overall really are quite low on loneliness. Older Canadians. It doesn't mean that there aren't those like the ones Sophie and Ami talked about who are lonely and they're the ones who had these big losses. Loss of a spouse, change in their health, isolation because of that woman talking about her blindness can be quite isolating and can make you more lonely. So changes in your life like that, financial downturns are a big problem for older people, as are these personal losses.

AMT: Because all of that can be isolating. Which countries have higher levels of loneliness?

NORAH KEATING: France, Germany, Netherlands, Japan are among the countries with higher levels of loneliness among older people.

AMT: Interesting. And now you heard others call this a public health epidemic. Would you classify it that way?

NORAH KEATING: I think that our focus on loneliness is important because it gives us a window into those people who are really not doing well, often people with mental health problems who've experienced big losses, who are poor and hence isolated. So in that sense, it gives us you know that window into those who need our attention. If we just looked at averages—and that's a dangerous thing to do—but if we just looked at averages, we'd say probably not.

AMT: What kind of approach would you like to see to reduce the loneliness you're talking about, though?

NORAH KEATING: I think that our approaches, our on the ground approaches like Ami is taking, can be very useful ones, helping to build social connections for those people who are isolated and who are unhappy with their contact with others. Not everybody wants a lot of contact. But as Sophie said, one of the difficulties is finding those people who are isolated and unhappy about their isolation, who haven't talked to anybody in a long time. I think her helpline is very useful. I think the interventions, redoing the building senior centres, getting people connected can be really important. Just the physical isolation in some parts of Canada over winters can be problematic for people who can become housebound because it's hard to get out.

AMT: Something to think about as we head into late September. Norah Keating, thank you.

NORAH KEATING: You're welcome.

AMT: Norah Keating, professor of social gerontology at the University of Alberta. She's in Summerland, BC. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We want to hear your stories on this topic as well. Is loneliness affecting you? Are you maybe helping someone who is vulnerable to being lonely? Write to us. Go to our www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, click on the contact link. You can find us on Facebook and on Twitter @thecurrentCBC. That's our program for today. And we're going out on a lonely note today with a melancholy yet lovely rendition of the Harry Nilsson song, “One.” This is Aimee Mann from the soundtrack to the film Magnolia. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Music: “One” – Harry Nilsson, sung by Aimee Mann]

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September 20, 2016 full episode transcript

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