Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for October 11, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We made the commitment that this was going to be the last election held under the first-past-the-post system and we are committed to doing that.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last May in the house, making it clear electoral reform was on the way. But what that reform might look like and when should it really happen are questions a committee charged with trying to design the system of how Canadians will vote in the future federal elections is looking into. In a few moments, I will speak with the vice chair of that committee. Also today...

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: loud noises and screams of joy]

PC: Those fishermen seem mighty happy with landing a large bluefin tuna. And others say they too have recently netted the tuna, because there's a lot around these days. But that's only one side of this fish story. Is the big fish in big trouble off the Atlantic coast? We take stock of that threat to the bluefin tuna in half an hour? And after that...

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I lost a tooth, I have no idea how it happened.

VOICE 2: Alright, you’re freaking me out man.

VOICE 3: I got a massive headache, OK, let’s just calm down.

VOICE 1: How am I supposed to calm down? Look around you.

PC: The comedy The Hangover had some moviegoers howling with laughter. But people with hangovers often wake up howled with howling headaches. In our last half hour, we look at the staggering promise of hangover-free alcohol. Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna-Maria Tremonti, and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Liberals need to stick to their promise of electoral reform: NDP's Nathan Cullen

Guests: Nathan Cullen, Susan Delacourt

SOUNDCLIP

This first-past-the-post does not make sense at all. It’s easy to put your x on the paper, but it’s impossible to explain the logic of how equal groups could have such disproportionate representation. That’s not modern democracy.

[crowd chatter]

I’ll be very let down if it doesn’t change because, you know, we’ve been talking about this for decades. It’s time to get the job done.

I believe I was 19 the first election that I was eligible to vote. Honestly, in each one of those I haven’t felt that my votes counted.

[crowd chatter]

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Some thoughts of some concerned voters at electoral consultation meetings in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. One of many such consultations happening across our country. The special committee on electoral reform is traveling far and wide educating Canadians and listening to their concerns about changing the way we vote. The Liberal government promised that the 2015 election would be the last to use the current first-past-the-post voting system. So now comes the hard job, of figuring out what that new system might look like. Nathan Cullen is a vice-chair of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform and the NDP’s critic for democratic reform. He’s in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

NATHAN CULLEN: Good morning.

PC: So you have spent months traveling the country talking about electoral reform with this special committee. Sounded like people in PEI were pretty into it. But what’s the interest been like?

NATHAN CULLEN: The interest has been really good, we’ve had I think 17,000 online submissions to the committee’s website, the deadline was last Friday. Where also many, I think most, with the exception of perhaps most Conservatives have held town halls or online forums, different discussions with Canadians across the country over the last number of months. So the interest is high, it’s one of those issues that for many people they don’t necessarily wake up in the morning thinking about, yet underlines every other issue that we do think about. Whether it’s the environment, the economy, war and peace, and all those other things that parliaments decide. So it might be one of the biggest issues this parliament decides on in the next few years, yet it gets not as much attention as some of the other ones, obviously.

PC: And as you heard from that tape from Charlottetown, I mean, people don’t like the first-past-the-post system, not everyone, but a lot of people. Why do you think our system needs to go the first-past-the-post system?

NATHAN CULLEN: Well, because I think, well, I believe in voter equality. And by that I mean that every vote cast in the country, regardless of who you vote for and where you vote should matter, should have some meaning. And the problem with our system right now is that say, about 18 million people voted in the last election, more than half of those votes went towards electing nobody. Where essentially, voices of Canadians, their expressed wish when they went into the ballot box with that power, yet that wish is not represented anywhere in our parliament. And that seems to me like just a basic flaw of the system. Which was designed in the 1200s and served well and serves well generally. With maybe the current example the United States right now not being a good one, but if you have two parties first-past-the-post is understandable, because one gets a little bit more than the other and then they move on. But thankfully, and many Canadians are expressing this these days, that we have multiple choices in Canada not just two parties to choose from.

PC: And so if not first-past-the-post then what? What are other leading voting alternatives?

NATHAN CULLEN: Well, if you look around the world, most successful democracies use something called proportional. So, a proportional system, and that means if you get about 20 per cent of the vote, you get about 20 per cent of the seats, and consequently 20 per cent of the power. And that's a more accurate description of what people want. And the ballot’s usually quite simple, the ones we're looking at anyways. You have one vote for a local candidate and a second vote for a party, and that second vote is what helps make up for the distortions that go under the first-past-the-post system, and it gets you a parliament that's more reflective of what people actually wanted. And again, it's what most countries that have been successful and have great indicators for economy and social justice, use a system like that.

PC: So there are, I mean, different machinations to proportional voting. But overall, is the system that you just described the one that the NDP would favour?

PC: Yeah, we've had this on the policy books as a party for probably 35 years now. Parliament's been discussing this almost for a century by the way. It's incredible how long, if you go back through the records, we just keep talking about it and I'm very glad we have this commitment to actually finally get it done and evolve Canada's voting system into this century. Well, at least this century. So we have a mixed member, so it's a bit of a hybrid, where you have about maybe two thirds or more of the parliament directly elected, and then another third that come off proportional lists and that makes up for the distortions that go under our current system.

PC: Now, the federal Conservatives want a referendum before making any changes to our electoral system, the NDP does not? Why not?

NATHAN CULLEN: Well, we've said there might be a middle ground. It's more I would suggest the Liberals and Greens that have said absolutely not, I think on the Liberal side. We think that there may be a place where we can see the system in place for a couple of elections, then have a vote put during an election, so it doesn't cost 300 or 350 million. And also, that way it gives voters an opportunity to actually see the system at work. We know there's a lot of resistance, and it's natural, to change to the unknown and these systems as you know get really complicated quickly. And a lot of people turn away and say I don't understand, and if I don't understand something it's a natural Canadian reaction to say no. So the thought is, bring in a new system that's got broad support and then try it out, make sure that the results are what people want. And if they don't, there's a kind of like a sunset clause built into the bill, so that it will automatically revert back to first-past-the-post. Unless we have a kind of a confirming referendum, rather than one where people throw out something that could be quite good because they simply haven't had any experience with it.

PC: Sounds a little less democratic than a referendum. Sort of saying let's just do this thing, rather than holding a referendum.

NATHAN CULLEN: Well, one could argue, and I think Mr. Trudeau and others have argued, that about 64, 65 per cent of the parliament got elected. The MPs that are in there right now got elected on a promise to change the voting system. It wasn't some kind of hidden agenda, it was front and centre. Others say it wasn't the top issue, Mr. Trudeau and others got elected for different reasons, which is probably also true. So we're trying to strike a middle ground and say a referendum is a democratic test. It's a bit of a blunt instrument and they don't tend to do well. We didn't put other questions like the women's right to vote or First Nations voting in Canada to a referendum for a good reason. I'm not sure that, you know, Canadian men in 1921 would’ve necessarily passed such a referendum. I'm hoping they would have, but I have my doubts. We know referendum have a confirming value, they tell us what you want. But we also see in Colombia and in the UK under Brexit, referendums also give you answers to questions you never asked. They're not something that you have, it's not a pure empirical test but it's a confirmation. And we think, try the new voting system out, put it to that confirmation so that Canadians know, absolutely know, they'll have the ultimate say on what happens with our voting system, because it belongs to them, it doesn't belong to the politicians.

PC: Nathan Cullen, thank you for your time, appreciate it. Thank you for the interest, appreciate it. Nathan Cullen is a vice chair of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform and also the NDP’s critic for democratic reform. He was in our Ottawa studio. While the Electoral Reform Committee is traveling the country listening to Canadians. Marc Mayrand, Canada's chief electoral officer, has suggested that electoral reform is not something to rush into. Susan Delacourt is a columnist with iPolitics and the Toronto Star. She's been watching all of this from Ottawa. And that's where she is today. Hi Suzanne.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Good morning.

PC: So what did Mark Mayrand say about the electoral reform process?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Well, basically he said that there is a principle that you can't just have one party forcing electoral change on a country, that's just, it's an international principle, it's a longstanding one. In fact, it's something that the Liberals in opposition argued quite forcefully when the Conservatives brought in their very unpopular electoral reform legislation a few years ago. He also said, and again, this is not new, that if we wanted to have a new electoral system in place by 2019 as the Liberals promised, that he would have to have everything in place by next spring.

PC: Mm.

SUSAN DELACOURT: So basically that rules out a referendum. It would play into, I actually like Nathan Cullen’s idea of try it out and referendum later. But I think Mayrand, in my view, as I was listening to him, was actually giving the Liberals a way out of this promise.

PC: And particularly, the timing if this had to get moving by this spring, the NDP and the Conservatives are leaderless, essentially. So does that play into this? I mean, is this really the time to be bringing in electoral reform when these parties, you know, can't represent their constituents effectively or at least don't have a leader, they’re going to change leaders soon enough.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Yeah, imagine that this becomes an issue during the leadership, and differing candidates within the NDP or the Conservatives have different positions on what kind of electoral system we need or want. It's very hard to get from a declaration of here's our new electoral system, to parties that won't even have leaders in place. The Conservatives choose their leader at the end of May, which is technically still spring. But the New Democrats don't choose their leader until fall. So, again, politically it's very hard to see how you can inflict electoral reform on parties that don't even have leaders or fixed positions on it yet. Although as Nathan Cullen says, the NDP promise is long standing, but who's to say they won't have a new leader who will have a different position?

PC: Mm. And Susan, as you've been looking at this, I mean, when you look around, you know, other western democracies, what countries have made the process of electoral reform effective?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Well, a lot have. And, you know, I think it's a reasonable expectation that we want to change our electoral system. New Zealand is the one that they cite most often, which did have a referendum. But I think that Canada is in a unique position right now with the timing of this. I think the principle and the idea of it are, I'm an old constitutional reporter, so I've been hearing about these things for a long time as well too, and I think the arguments that we need a new electoral system are quite compelling. The problem is the timing.

PC: Mm. And another challenge as Nathan Cullen mentioned and, you know, won't surprise you at all it is that Canadians are more interested or at least seemingly in sort of, you know, taxes and foreign policy and other things that affect us in our day to day lives. Is the apparent lack of interest a reason to pull back on electoral reform now?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Well, you know, I wrote a whole book about the consumerization of politics and the idea that just because people want something is not necessarily a reason to give it to them. And the reverse is true too, that principle politics is more than about supplying people what they want or avoiding what they don't want. That being said, if the Liberals are looking for a way to buy some time on this, sheer political calculation would say that they're not going to a pay huge price for this, because it just hasn't been a front of mind. Now, when I've written this, the reaction has been the public is interested, the media isn't.

PC: And yet here we are.

SUSAN DELACOURT: And here we are, yes. [chuckles]

PC: [laughs]

SUSAN DELACOURT: Actually, I am very interested in this, but I was hearing Liberals talk as long ago as this summer. And I will say not people close to the prime minister, this is just sort of Liberals at large talking about, would they pay a price for not doing this? So I think that is out there already.

PC: And do you think, because as we heard at the top of the show Susan, you know, and the prime minister said look last year 2015, that federal election, last time of first-past-the-post federally. Do you think that Justin Trudeau now regrets having made this a platform on his campaign a year ago?

SUSAN DELACOURT: It was interesting. As I wrote last week, I walked into that press conference late and I walked in precisely at the moment where he was saying that, and I thought why is he doing this? I think maybe the Liberals will recall when he made that promise in June 2015, were third place in the polls, a distant third in the polls. And I think he was trying to convey to Canadians that he would shake up everything. That he was the, you know, their slogan was real change. But it was never clear to me what constituency they were after, because it's as we say, it wasn’t a huge issue before the election, it certainly wasn't an issue in the election. I don't recall it even coming up during the debates.

PC: Susan, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Thanks Piya.

PC: Susan Delacourt is a columnist with iPolitics and the Toronto Star. We reached her in Ottawa. We asked for an interview with Maryam Monsef, the Minister of Democratic Institutions, but she was unavailable.

Back To Top »

How a teacher who impeded Joyce Graham Fogwill as a child changed her life for the better

Guests: Joyce Graham Fogwill

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Well, as part of our project this season called The Disruptors, we're highlighting stories of personal disruption. Joyce Graham Fogwill is a retired college instructor from Winnipeg, and for decades she taught in the chemical and bio sciences technology program at Red River College. But she tells us she would not have made it as a college instructor if not for a turning point in her education when she was a child. Here's Joyce Graham Fogwill and her moment of disruption.

[Music: somber piano]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: I spent my childhood in Jamaica. Most people had good parents, and parents who although they were poor, they tried very hard and they worked very hard to give their children a good education. My circumstances are a little different. My mother had sort of abandoned me. My father had taken over my care, but he did not want to really care for me, so he put me to live with somebody who was a stranger and he started to pay for my care. And then gradually, gradually, gradually she wasn't getting any money for my care. So, you know, every day almost, I was reminded that I was just an abandoned child.

[Music: somber piano]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: And so, it became very very difficult, because I didn't have family support and I had friends, but all my friends had families and brothers and sisters and so on. I didn't have that and I spent a lot of time when I was able to at the library, and I read many many many many books. I was just haunting the library all the time, and that's how I think I was able to survive, because I buried myself in books.

[long pause]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: So when this opportunity came, it was wonderful. It would have been wonderful, because anything for my life would depend on my education. Education was everything.

[Music: xylophone]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: At about age 11, we had the opportunity to take a scholarship. And that scholarship meant everything to us as children, because that scholarship enabled us to get on to further higher education, which opened up opportunities for one's life. And my teacher at that time just did not want this to happen for me. So when the time came to take these exams to go on to become a trained elementary school teacher, my class room teacher said no. I was regarded as the most academically gifted student at the school. And why would she prevent me from doing that? And everybody thought, you know, this this is really bad.

[Music ends]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: I have no idea, and nobody knew why. Except I remember that I did a little assignment for her on the earthworm and at the end, I’m 11, at the end I wrote here endeth the Epistle, and I remember she was very angry. It was just something at the end of the New Testament, at the end of St. Paul's letters to the Corinthians. I must have been reading something like that and I wrote it at the end of my essay, here endeth the Epistle, and she was angry. But I can’t see why something like that would have caused her to just block me. But maybe it did.

[Music: steel drum]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: So the principal decided that he would try me to sit for the secondary school exams and the paid secondary school exams, which I couldn't afford. But if I passed it, if I got a scholarship, I would go on. And when I sat for the scholarships, to everyone's surprise, I got a scholarship. And that was what happened. The other pathway that she had that I was supposed to do, the one that she refused me, would have let me to go to teacher's college and become an elementary school teacher at that time. But her refusal allowed me to go to another path and eventually ended up with a university education and my career.

[Music: steel drum and electro beats]

JOYCE GRAHAM FOGWILL: For me, it was a disruptor because she blocked me from doing what I thought was going to be my only pathway for an education. She disrupted me completely. But in her disruption, what she did, she put me on an alternate pathway and this alternate pathway allowed me to have my career, my education, my career, and the life that I have now.

[Music: ambient electronic]

PC: That personal moment of disruption was from Joyce Graham Fogwill, of Winnipeg. You can find all the moments of disruption we featured so far this season and the ones to come on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. When you get there, click on features and the disruptors. And we do want to hear your story about a moment that disrupted your life. So you can email us your story as Joyce did, by going to our website again at cbc.ca/thecurrent and clicking on the Contact link. As well, there are other ways to get in touch with this program. You can do so on Twitter, the handle is @TheCurrentCBC, my personal handle is @Piya, that is P-i-y-a. You can find us on Facebook as well, facebook.com/cbcthecurrent. Alright, coming up in our next half hour, the fate of the bluefin tuna may be on the line, depending on whom you ask. We'll have that debate for you coming up after the news. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, and you're listening to The Current. We're back in just a bit.

[Music: Extro]

Back To Top »

Conservationists fear surplus of Atlantic bluefin tuna does not equate to healthy stock

Guests: John Hopkins, Gary Melvin, Katie Schleit

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, the head spinning marketing of hangover-free booze. But first, taking stock of the threat to the bluefin tuna.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Tuna’s in bite-sized chunks by the time sushi lovers encounter the fish on their plates. But in the wild, they’re the ocean's big game. The biggest Atlantic bluefin tuna ever caught was just shy of 1,500 pounds or about 700 kilograms. It was reeled in off Nova Scotia back in 1979. Then in the 1980s, bluefin tuna disappeared from some of their usual haunts around the Maritimes. And by 2011, Canadian scientists warned this species was endangered. Ottawa however, never gave bluefin tuna protection under the Species At Risk Act. In the meantime, the fish have made a comeback, at least off North Lake Prince Edward Island. In such numbers, some fishermen say they're hand-feeding these giants from the side of their boats. So is tuna in trouble or not? A new documentary called Bluefin, explores the competing points of view of conservationists who want to be cautious and fishermen who've known the rush of landing a big one.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: water splashing]

VOICE 1: Just take it out of gear for a minute.

VOICE 2: There's no money to be made tuna fishing anymore. The way I see it, a lot of them, half of it’s for the thrill.

[Music: piano]

VOICE 2: I'd like to see the flash when it comes up and his gills are going, black eyes, you can see the fear in his eye. He's an untamed monster and there he is, I’ve tamed him and hundreds of them.

VOICE 3: Atlantic bluefin tuna were once present in the South Atlantic, off Brazil, Argentina, South Africa.

[Sound: waves crashing]

VOICE 3: So I think the large abundance here is really fortunate for people living here. But it's really like one herd of buffalo in one of the last valleys where they’re found in abundance, whereas there’s entire plains where they’re not seen at all. The fishermen are very frustrated when they watch the news or see a newspaper article about bluefin tuna, calls for extinction, or endangered species, what have you. Because we don’t see it. We're on the water everyday, we’re the stewards of the sea, we know what's going on over there.

VOICE 4: They’re on crack man, crack. The f--king ones that comes out off of here and says that there’s no f--king tuna, it’s crazy. There’s not a chance they’re endangered, not a chance.

PC: Those are some voices from a new documentary called Bluefin. John Hopkins is the filmmaker behind the documentary. And he's in Charlottetown. Hello.

JOHN HOPKINS: Hi.

PC: How you doing?

JOHN HOPKINS: I'm doing excellently, I was out on the water yesterday. We were fishing some tuna. And it's the same kind of story, the fish are finding us, we're not finding them.

PC: Did you have them eating out of your hands?

JOHN HOPKINS: Yeah, they came right up to the boat.

PC: So what does it mean, John, to the fishermen to have the tuna back in the waters off PEI and in such numbers, as you say you've been seeing them.

JOHN HOPKINS: Well, I mean the thing is it's a bit of a mystery. I mean, the fish completely disappeared. I mean, they were overfished in the seventies and early eighties. And, you know, you were getting as much as 40,000 dollars for a fish. And when they came back, they changed their behaviour. Before they were very skittish of human beings, it was hard to find them, you had to hunt them. Now they actually seem to have lost all their fears and people are hand-feeding them right over the side of the boat. One fisherman actually lied down on the gunnel of the boat, put a herring down and an 800 pound tuna came by, and it caught the entire tuna from its gill plate right to the tail. And he said that just blew him away.

PC: Fishermen and conservationists sort of interpret this behaviour differently, right?

JOHN HOPKINS: Well, I mean, you got to ask. And I've talked to a lot of fishermen out there and basically what people are saying is that these fish are extremely hungry, they're starving. From what the fishermen are telling me, the herring down in New England along the New England coast have been overfished, and a lot of these fish are coming straight up after they spawn in the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf St. Lawrence. And when they enter the Gulf, they're extremely hungry and they're desperate and they're actually seeking down boats as food sources. So I mean, I know one fisherman that gets in his boat and does like a 360 with the throttle full open, he sends a sonic wave out for miles, saying here I am and the fish come.

PC: Mm. So I don't understand much about fishing. Is that the only evidence that the fish are starving, you know, that they're willing to be hand fed and come up almost like a, you know, a domestic pet and say hey, I'm hungry, feed me, or is there other evidence?

JOHN HOPKINS: Yeah, there is other evidence. I mean, I filmed this over five years and I've been on the water and observed this firsthand. There's a wonderful run of herring that happens in the fall. There used to be one in the spring but they've been over fished, they’re gone. All that's left is a herring in the fall herring. And the first years out there was like five kilometres of herring, where there was herring boats fishing them. And then the next year I went out, there was a section maybe three kilometres long where the boats were, next year three, and then the last year I was there, it was like half a kilometre and all the herring boats were there fishing, the charter boats were fishing there, the minke whales were trying to get something eat. People were hooking up tuna getting them caught on nets. The gannets are going crazy, the gannets are hungry as well, and so are the whales. In fact, last year when we went out and filmed our underwater sequences, we had whales coming up behind the boat and they were doing the same, they started copying what the tuna were doing and the fishermen never seen that before. We almost caught a whale with a mackerel and a hook, and just flipped it out of his mouth at the last second and it landed on top of his head. The whale stuck his head out of the water and was wondering where it was, where is it, where did it go? It was amazing. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

PC: It is so interesting to hear from you about where we are today. As you well know, tuna has a storied history. And it's such a different story than it was from the early days of the fishery. So tell this urban dweller how the tuna fishery came about.

JOHN HOPKINS: Years ago in North Lake, there were tuna around, but tuna were considered a nuisance, they were always breaking their nets up. They called them horse mackerel and nobody even thought they were edible, because they were so greasy nobody wanted them. And then the sports fishery developed, because there was a large sports fishery in Westport, Nova Scotia. And people like Ernest Hemingway were coming up, Roosevelt and other Zane Grey and other very famous people and that sort of spread over to North Lake. So a sports fishery jumped up, where everybody wanted to catch a world record. I mean, it became a big cultural thing. There was like tuna pageants, tuna Queens, this type of thing. Then they were dumped at sea or they were buried. And that was about the only value to them. And then the Japanese found out that there were a tuna there, because Japanese Airlines was looking for a way of finding something that could survive the price of air freight back to Japan, because all their fleets of 747s and DC-8s had nothing going back to Japan.

PC: Ha.

JOHN HOPKINS: But when they were coming, they were full of freight because everything was made in Japan at one point. Everything you read at the bottom of anything, now it's made in China, but at one point everything was made in Japan. So there was a man called Wayne McAlpine who suggested that the Japanese Airlines executives take a flight down to North Lake, and when they went there they saw these amazing fish, and they knew the value of them. 90 per cent of the cargo holds of the entire Japanese Airlines was full of bluefin going back to Japan.

PC: We hear in your film from one of the fisherman who says there's no money in the fishery. And this is where the Japanese come in again for me. Japanese buyers as I understand, are reputed to pay a fortune for the fish, so how is there no money in the fishery when on the other hand there seems to be a lot of willingness to pay for it?

JOHN HOPKINS: Well, there's no money in the fishery because the abundance, although it has the appearance of a lot of fish there, is actually at a very low level and it has been for many many years. And so, fishermen can't catch more than one or two tuna a year. So they're frustrated because they want to catch five or six or seven, they can sell them anywhere from five to ten thousand dollars, that's kind of like the range in what they go now. But if you can only catch one fish a year, there's absolutely no money in it at all. And in fact, when you look at the numbers, and I have, the lobster industry for example in Prince Edward Island in 2012 was pretty close to 115 million dollars. And the tuna industry was probably around just over 1.5-2 million, which means that the revenue from tuna was less than one per cent of fishermen's income. So the thing is is this film I’m making, the documentary Bluefin, it’s not for fishing, it’s not against fishing, it's about making sense. It's about investing in your fishery and saying OK, why don't we just leave these things alone? If you left them alone for four or five years, and if we got up to the point where we had 70 per cent abundance, 80 per cent, I mean, then it would make sense to go out and catch five or six or seven. Then you'd have a viable business.

PC: John, it's been good to talk to you and congrats on, you won the best Atlantic filmmaker award at the Lunenburg Doc Fest last month. So, congrats on that.

JOHN HOPKINS: Thank you.

PC: John Hopkins’ documentary film is called Bluefin. And he spoke with us from Charlottetown, PEI. We've alluded to this stature this fish has figuratively and literally, one person who's seen it up close in the water is wildlife photographer Brian Skerry.

SOUNDCLIP

BRIAN SKERRY: The animals that I was swimming with off of PEI, some of these animals are, you know, 800, 1000 pounds, 1,200 pounds, you know, 5-600 kilos perhaps, and they occupy this murky green water down there. You know, when you're in that water you don't see anything, you know, it's just sort of this dark gloom, dimly lit world, and then all of a sudden you see this behemoth, this Porsche, you know, coming up from the bottom, all sort of glowing in silver and flashing colours. And then it just sort of comes up in front of you and you know that all the while you weren't seeing them, but they were seeing you. That giant eye was keeping an eye on you, and they're so aware. They'll rocket up from the depths and then just turn on a dime, while all the time while flashing, moving a fin, their tail, the little the slot in their back for their dorsal fin, it sort of folds down like a fan, like a geisha fan, and then it comes up and they can turn on a dime. It's just amazing to watch. I was so mesmerized. I was just so blown away, you know, I've been chasing bluefin tuna for decades. I remember driving down in the 1980s to the North Carolina Outer Banks and searching for them offshore, and then in the Mediterranean off of Spain and in various places around the world, and never had an encounter like I did here in the Maritimes.

PC: And simply put, Brian Skerry says there's no creature on land that compares to the bluefin tuna.

SOUNDCLIP

BRIAN SKERRY: This is an animal that has been studied by naval engineers to make a better torpedo, but they swim faster than torpedoes. It's a predator that swims thousands, tens of thousands of miles in the course of a year. They crisscross the entire ocean. There's no predator on land that that travels those distances. They can generate heat in their body, they're effectively a warm blooded fish, an endothermic animal, and because of that they can swim practically from the equator to the poles. You know, there's no animal like that, but because they’re a fish we don't give them their due.

PC: That's Brian Skerry, he's a photographer whose work appears in National Geographic. Well five years ago, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, COSIWEC, determined this tuna stock had declined by about 70 per cent. To talk about what government scientists make of the data, I'm joined by Gary Melvin. He's a research scientist with the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And Gary is in Madrid, Spain to talk tuna with scientists from other countries ahead of a meeting next month of ICCAT. That's the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Gary Melvin, hello.

GARY MELVIN: Hi, how are you today?

PC: I'm alright. Let's just be blunt about this, I mean, what does the data tell you, is Atlantic bluefin tuna endangered or not?

GARY MELVIN: I wouldn't use the term endangered. Things have changed remarkably from the mid, let’s say the mid-2000s to the present. If you go back until around 2008 to 10 and you looked at the biomass of bluefin tuna, you would find they were at a very low level and they were staying there. They simply weren't increasing in their overall biomass. However, you know, almost seven to eight years have passed since that time frame, and there's been some substantial changes in the assessment numbers and the biomass that's been estimated that's out there. For example--

PC: [interposing] OK, so give me the numbers Gary. I mean, according to your assessments what is the estimated size of the tuna stock now?

GARY MELVIN: The current stock size is about 28,000 tons. That's the spawning stock biomass, the adult fish that actually reproduce. So 28,000 tons. And if you looked at the assessment back in 2008, it was around 16,000 tons. So there's been a substantial increase in the overall biomass since between 2008 and the latest numbers are up to 2014.

PC: And Gary, how do you assess the health of a fish stock that ranges over such a huge territory? We're talking, you know, from the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of Newfoundland.

GARY MELVIN: There are a number of methods. Most of them are related to the actual fishery, where we use what we call a catch per unit effort index of abundance, to determine whether or not, it's actually a fishing rate, is increasing or decreasing. And that fishing rate is assumed to actually reflect what's going on with the actual population of fish. So in the analytical assessment, which brings in all the catches from over the entire range, as well as these indices of abundance, we sort of plot it out. It's a relatively complex mathematical model. but it integrates all of this and gives you an estimate of what the biomass is over time.

PC: How much Atlantic bluefin tuna are fishermen allowed to catch now, compared to say, a decade ago when the stocks were lower?

GARY MELVIN: In fact, actually the quota was very low up until 2014, relatively speaking. It was 1,750 tons. It increased to 2,000 tons in 2015 and 2016.

PC: And Gary, we heard from our earlier guest, from John, that at least the anecdotal evidence that the tuna are starving. Is there any evidence that you see that the tuna are starving or showing up off PEI in increasing numbers, because they can't find food elsewhere?

GARY MELVIN: We have no evidence that there's actually sort of food problems. We see fat fish, we see the relationship between the size of the fish and the weight of the fish remaining relatively constant. So from that perspective we have no evidence to suggest that their food is limiting. It was very interesting actually to listen to John about the fish around the boats and why they’re there. And in fact, in many cases I believe it's a learned behaviour, in that they found a food source that’s easy to get. And one of the things that I managed to experience two years ago off Tignish, is to go out in a very small boat cruise around the gillnet fleet and look at the bluefin tuna with sonar. And we could actually look all around the boats, and we were observing anywhere from 30 to 50 bluefin tuna around each vessel. They were there taking the spillage from the gill netters who were pulling their fish and from the crew who were actually feeding them, just for entertainment. It was quite remarkable, because there are about 30 boats there. So if you multiply it out, it was a relatively large amount of bluefin tuna. Even more interesting thing is the moment the boats left, so did the fish.

PC: So they just came to eat and then go on their merry way?

GARY MELVIN: Right. Now whether they're following the herring, which come up onto the spawning areas at night and aggregate, or whether they're paying attention to the sound of the boats, as John implied one fisherman used to rev his boat in a circle, we're not sure. But I'd be hard pressed to say that they're starving.

PC: OK, where’s Tignish by the way?

GARY MELVIN: Tignish is in PEI.

PC: OK. Thank you for that. Let me ask you this, and you know this well. Here in Canada, last week an audit by the federal commissioner of the environment warned we’re still at risk of having a collapse. And it's similar to what happened to the northern cod, because in most, 12 out of 15 cases, the department lacks rebuilding plans for stocks that are in trouble. So I want to ask you this, what do you say to Canadians who just don't have confidence in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans?

GARY MELVIN: It's actually not so much the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that’s actually responsible for ICCAT and bluefin tuna. Each country that's a member has a vote and the management issues are delegated from ICCAT, and then a quota is set by the commission, and then there are sharing rules that have been established over time between the different member countries, and each one gets their portion of the quota.

PC: Well, it's been good to talk to you Gary. Bye bye.

GARY MELVIN: Bye.

PC: Gary Melvin chairs the western bluefin tuna stock assessment working group. He's a scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans based at the biological station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. But today we reached him in Madrid, Spain. Katie Schleit leads work on tuna conservation at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax. It is the only Canadian environmental group that attends annual meetings of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, ICCAT. Katie Schleit’s in Halifax. Hello.

KATIE SCHLEIT: Hey.

PC: Looking at the bluefin tuna Katie, do you believe that bluefin tuna need protection?

KATIE SCHLEIT: It's clear from us that the government is not doing enough and there needs to be an increased focus on recovery. Canadian scientists back in 2011 felt that they were in such a state that they should be designated as an endangered. We know that the current population is only at about half of its historic levels. So there really needs to be an increased focus on recovery from the government and whether they choose to do that through the Species At Risk Act or whether they choose to do that using existing tools through the Fisheries Act, there's different ways to go. But what we do know is that there needs to be an increased focus on recovery.

PC: Mm. But we just heard that the science shows a fairly healthy stock now.

KATIE SCHLEIT: Well, it's only increasing from its extremely low levels, it's not actually getting back to levels that it once was. So for us that means in the coming year, so at the meeting in November, the ICCAT meeting, we have to keep current quotas the same. It's not a time to increase catches, we don't have any new science. And again, we're showing that we really need to continue on this path towards recovery. The ICCAT, the international body, they adopted a recovery plan for this stock almost 20 years ago with the aim to have the stock fully recovered by 2018. Well, here we are in 2016 and we're only halfway there.

PC: OK, I want to play a bit of tape for you. It's from Jeff Hutchings, he studies the reasons fish stocks collapse and the factors that help them recover. He does that at Dalhousie University, that’s in Halifax of course. And Jeff Hutchings is also the former chair of the Committee of the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, or COSIWEC, which we're talking about. He says the federal government doesn't have a great record on following the advice of its scientists.

SOUNDCLIP

The pattern has been since the passage of the Species At Risk Act in 2003, to not accept COSIWEC’s advice to list an endangered or threatened marine fish if it's considered to have any commercial importance. Such as Atlantic cod, a fish called a cusk, some sturgeon, there's been a number of flatfishes. The only two endangered or threatened marine fish for which the government’s accepted cool COSIWEC’s advice is the basking shark, Canada's largest fish on the West Coast and the white shark, the great white shark on the East Coast. Neither of which are commercially exploited. What it reflects is a tension that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has with the Species At Risk Act legislation. It's a piece of legislation that doesn't have a lot of flexibility. So if a marine fish such as a COD was listed under the Species At Risk Act as endangered or threatened, then immediately prohibitions come into play that say that you're not allowed to catch the fish, harm the fish in any manner. So that makes it problematic if DFO would like to maintain a small fishery for some of these highly depleted species.

PC: That’s Jeff Hutchings, fisheries scientist at Dalhousie University. Katie Schleit, what do you make of the politics that he's describing there?

KATIE SCHLEIT: Yeah, we definitely agree with his analysis. We don't see many commercially marine species listed on the Species At Risk Act, and a lot of that is because of socio economic concerns. They really only look at the short term outcomes, if they had to eliminate the fishery. So what would happen if we eliminated a fishery to the fishermen tomorrow? And obviously there would be a lot of loss of income, but they don't look at what would happen if we were able to rebuild the species in time and actually be able to provide more fish and more livelihood opportunities for fishermen? There also needs to be an emphasis on developing a new way of assessing stocks and that's through a method called harvest strategies. And Canada’s actually been a champion for this kind of approach before. And it's been shown to be a better way to manage stocks and one that involves both fishermen and managers, and can also bring out some of that, I guess, the politics in the year to year quota decisions. We'd also like to see some better monitoring in the fishery, so more observer coverage. And a lot of these are actually highlighted in the auditor general report as deficiencies currently in the department.

PC: Katie Schleit, thank you for your assessment. Good to talk to you as well.

KATIE SCHLEIT: Thank you.

PC: Bye bye.

KATIE SCHLEIT: Bye.

PC: Katie Schleit is a senior marine campaign coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre, that's in Halifax.

[Music: piano]

PC: I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna-Maria Tremonti this week here on The Current. If you want to talk with us we like when you do, so you can get in touch with us. You can go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent, there's all the ways to reach us there. You can find us on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC and on Facebook facebook.com/cbcthecurrent. If you prefer e-mail, once you get to our website click on the Contact Us link and then send us that e-mail. While you're on our website, you can check out pictures, links, download the podcast. Lots of stuff to do. It's all at cbc.ca/thecurrent. OK, well we talked about what might be on your plate in terms of tuna. Coming up in our next half hour, we’re going to talk about what might be in your glass. We're going to question the benefits of hangover free synthetic alcohol. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, that conversation, those conversations coming up. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Back To Top »

A new synthetic alcohol promises good times drinking without the headaches and hangovers

Guests: David Nutt, Mark Haden, Christine Sismondo

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

DEWEY FINN: OK, teach, teach, teach. Alright, look, here’s the deal, I’ve got a hangover, who knows what that means?

STUDENT 1: Doesn’t that mean you’re drunk?

DEWEY FINN: No, it means I was drunk yesterday.

STUDENT 2: It means you're an alcoholic.

DEWEY FINN: Wrong.

FREDDY JONES: You wouldn't come to work hungover unless you're an alcoholic. Dude, you got a disease.

DEWEY FINN: Hmm, hmm. What's your name?

FREDDY JONES: Freddy Jones.

DEWEY FINN: Hmm, Freddy Jones, shutup.

[Sound: students laughing]

PC: [laughs] Doing anything while hung over is hard enough, especially being a substitute teacher, as Jack Black's character demonstrates in The School of Rock. But imagine, imagine if you could have a night out drinking and not worry about waking up groggy, achy, and hung over the next day. And what if there was an alcohol healthy enough that it wouldn't cause any long term liver damage? Well a new synthetic alcohol being developed in the United Kingdom is promising to do just that. It is called Alcosynth. David Nutt is former adviser on drugs to the UK government and a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College in London. He has patented the synthetic alcohol, which is designed to mimic the intoxicating effects of alcohol without the health risks. We've reached him in London. Hello.

DAVID NUTT: Hi.

PC: So a healthy alcohol sounds, well, almost too good to be true. So set this up for me, what is Alcosynth exactly?

DAVID NUTT: Well, it is exactly what you have just said. It's a substance which has been developed to go into drinks, so it will go into a cocktail the same way as you might put a rum into a pina colada, you’ll put an Alcosynth into a pina colada, so you’ll have the same flavour as you normally drink. But this, instead of damaging your liver and your heart and your brain which is inevitable with alcohol, you won't. You’ll get the same good effects without the bad effects. And as you also pointed out, you won't get so much of a hangover either because you won't get the toxicity of alcohol in the brain.

PC: So what does this look like? What does Alcosynth look like?

DAVID NUTT: Well, it's a drink. It looks like a solution that goes into a drink. So it can look like gin. There are different ones, I’ve patented several, but there are different ones. Some of them are more milky and some of them are more just like clear, like gin.

PC: And what does it taste like? Like if I poured Alcosynth on the rocks in a nice tumbler, will it taste like gin?

DAVID NUTT: No, no. So the point about alcohol is that no one drinks pure alcohol. All the alcohols you drink, even vodka, are flavoured, because alcohol by itself tastes horrible. Alcosynth itself doesn't taste very good, but what you do if you put it into a drink that you like the flavour of. It's not a drink in itself, it is a substrate for a drink.

PC: OK. And what's it made of?

DAVID NUTT: There are different things. Let me be clear, this is not something that is brewed. So this is something that's made scientifically to mimic the effects of alcohol. So is not a variant of distilled alcohol. This is a substance designed through pharmacology and neuroscience to mimic the effects of alcohol.

PC: OK. Dr. Nutt, explain this one to me. That sounds interesting all to me. But I guess the benefit is that it's healthier than traditional alcohol, so what is it in it that makes it healthier?

DAVID NUTT: Actually it's not difficult to be healthier than alcohol--

PC: [laughs]

DAVID NUTT: Because alcohol is so toxic. I mean, people don't realize this but if alcohol was discovered today, suppose your mother discovered this substance called alcohol, and she said oh this is amazing if I put this into my trifles, I can make a much tastier trifle for Christmas. And then she said I want to sell this as a food additive. And she’d go to the authorities and she’d say what have I got to do? And they’d say oh you've got to test it for safety. And she’d test it for safety. And after she done that, they'd say OK, well the maximum allowable dosing of alcohol in one person per year is 100 mls. So that's like the glass of wine. That's how toxic alcohol is. Usually we drink two to three times that in a sitting. But alcohol is very very toxic, so actually anything pretty much that you take is less toxic than alcohol. So Alcosynth it's made to be pharmaceutical level of safety. So something is safe enough to give to people who are ill. And also of course, it’s got the other real advantage, it’s got no calories, because for a lot of people, a significant proportion of the calories they take in are from alcohol.

PC: If I drink this, am I going to get drunk?

DAVID NUTT: Well you won’t get as badly drunk as if you drink the alcohol. I mean, it has what we call a plateau. However much you consume, you can't get over a certain plateau. Which is which is basically designed to be about the equivalent of about three drinks. So you'll get pleasantly intoxicated, but you won't get blind drunk, you can't kill yourself on it, you won't get aggressive, you won't get angry, you won’t vomit, and you won't have a hangover and you also won't get dependent. We've taken out the targets in the brain where alcohol causes addiction.

PC: Alright, well there have been other attempts at synthetic alcohol. There was one in 2011, which used a derivative of benzodiazepine. What makes yours, what makes Alcosynth different?

DAVID NUTT: Well, it's more sophisticated, it's got better science, the target is more refined now. The science of alcohol has moved on a lot in the last 10 years, and we now know more about what we have to target in the brain to get the right effects and what we mustn't target in order to avoid getting the bad effects. So I think it's just a progressive science. So, you know, it’s going from the first stage mobile phone which was the size of a brick to the second stage which is something that you can carry around in your pocket. Maybe we'll get to the third stage, put it on your wrists at some point. I think if it’s a successful development, then there will be enormous incentive to keep on refining and improving it.

PC: And do you know yet about the long term effects of drinking Alcosynth? So if you have, you know--

DAVID NUTT: Well, you can’t, no one’s been drinking it for 60 years, like some are, people who drink alcohol. Now of course, we won't know that for 60 years. But what we do know is that it meets the safety levels we require of a medicine that will be given in the long term. So we can say that’s a level of safety which is about the highest level of safety you can get in anything you take.

PC: And have you tried this with human beings? Have they tried mixing this with traditional alcohol?

DAVID NUTT: I’ve had parties on it, yeah. [laughs]

PC: You’ve done parties with it?

DAVID NUTT: Of course, yes. I mean, you know, how else would you find out what it does? [chuckles] But, you know, this is not a theoretical construct, this is a product which is ready to rollout.

PC: OK, so when you have these parties were people drinking regular alcohol that you can get out of the store and taking Alcosynth? Have you tried that experiment?

DAVID NUTT: Not so much. But we have tried a little bit and where I’m at, the effects quite reassuring in the sense that if anything it tended to, if people drank alcohol after they were drinking alcohol, if anything it tended to sober them up. So it doesn't seem to have an additive effect with alcohol, which is good, which is important because we don't want to make people more drunk.

PC: And Dr. Nutt, when you look to the future, how do you envision this being used? I mean, who's your target market for this?

DAVID NUTT: My target market are sensible people who want to enjoy the experiences of alcohol without doing the body damage.

PC: So the mass market?

DAVID NUTT: Well, I think I'm targeting people that care about their health. I'm targeting probably young professionals. My real target are the next generation, the people who haven't yet started drinking. It will be great if people never drank alcohol and only drank Alcosynth, because that would have enormously beneficial health impact. Alcohol is the second leading cause of premature death in the world after smoking. Smoking kills six million people a year, alcohol four million. And alcohol has a particularly deleterious effect on young people, and I'd like to eliminate that.

PC: Could this be used, this product, to treat alcoholics?

DAVID NUTT: Yeah, in theory it could, yeah. I mean, I think if people switch from alcohol to this, they certainly would stop dying of liver failure if they are in that kind of medical situation with alcohol. Whether it's strong enough to give them what they get, when people get to a point where they're dependent on alcohol, they may find the effects of Alcosynth not sufficiently strong. It would certainly stop some of the withdrawal I think, I certainly wouldn't say it couldn't help it might help, but I'm not promoting it as a treatment for alcoholism, I’m actually promoting it as a treatment to stop people ever becoming alcoholic.

PC: And what's been the reaction from drug regulators and the government in the UK to Alcosynth so far?

DAVID NUTT: Well, I mean, there's no real big reaction really, the Department of Health had said well, this is very interesting, and just make sure it’s safe. And beyond I’ve had no reactions.

PC: Well, just before I let you go, when can, you know, we expect to go to a store and get Alcosynth off the shelf?

DAVID NUTT: Oh, stop stop stop. You’ve fallen into that terrible trap.

PC: What’s that?

DAVID NUTT: Of assuming we're going to sell it through stores. Let me make this clear, the reason we have such huge problems with alcohol in most western countries is because we sell it in stores. Now, when I started drinking, I’m talking about the late 1960s, alcohol was only sold in licensed premises. And that made it hard for young people who are under 18 to get access to it, and it also, people tended to be observed when they were drinking. The biggest problem we have is the selling of alcohol away from licensed premises. I want Alcosynth to be sold in bars and drunk in bars so people will then engage in the right use of alcohol. Alcohol should be used socially, it should be used to improve communication and social interaction amongst friends and colleagues, it should be used to facilitate discussion and debate. It's not something that should be swilled in front of the television and that's the problem. So I'm not going to sell it in stores. I'm going to sell it only in licensed bars.

PC: OK, let me ask the question this way then. When can I expect to walk into a bar and get my hands on some Alcosynth?

DAVID NUTT: When a couple of Canadian investors tell me they’ve got enough money to start selling it. I'm ready to go.

PC: Dr. Nutt, good to talk to you. Thank you.

DAVID NUTT: Thank you.

PC: David Nutt is the creator of Alcosynth, a synthetic alcohol. He's a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College in London, England. And that's where we reached him. Well, not everyone is ready to raise a toast to Alcosynth, Mark Haden is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health, where he focuses on drug policy research and in a couple of weeks he's planning on meeting with David Nutt to help engage Canadian researchers on these issues. We've reached Mark Haden in Vancouver. Hi.

MARK HADEN: Good morning Piya.

PC: So what do you make of Alcosynth as a drug to replace alcohol?

MARK HADEN: Well, I think it's a product of interest. And I'm certainly interested in trying to find the researchers who might be willing to take a look at it and see what it actually does. Yeah, it's very interesting, it's a good idea. Alcohol is so incredibly harmful to our society, if we could find something that people like a little bit better than alcohol, they would actually use it, but didn't do the harms of alcohol, I think we as a society would be on the right track.

PC: And so to that point, I mean, what kind of experiments have been done to this point to see how regular drinkers react to this substance? Both health wise and intoxication wise.

MARK HADEN: Well, people have tried it and been talking about it. So I'm both interested in regular drinkers. I mean, the experience of regular drinkers is if you mix one into a glass of water and you drink it, it feels like you've had one beer. If you mix a second into a glass of water and you drink it, it feels like you've had two beers. By that I mean you're disinhibited, you're relaxed, but you're not really sedated. If you mix three into a glass of water, a third into a glass of water and you drink it, what happens is you feel, it's hard to describe, it’s kind of spacey. But if you mix the fourth into a glass of water and drink it, it changes quite dramatically and you feel similar to if you just imagine you've just had two large pieces of cheesecake and somebody puts out a third piece of cheesecake in front of you, you're done. You hit this very interesting wall with it, that is absolutely satiating. You just don't want any more.

PC: That's that plateau or the cap that David Nutt talked about.

MARK HADEN: Well, I wouldn't describe it as a plateau, I’d describe it as a wall. You just simply get finished with this, which is interesting, because alcohol just promotes more drinking of alcohol. The out of control aspect of alcohol can be a real problem in our society. And the AI seems to be, or Alcosynth seems to be satiating in a very odd way.

PC: And so that's, you know, what's been seen on regular social drinkers, most of us. But what have they found about how hardcore drinkers respond to Alcosynth?

MARK HADEN: Well, the person who invented this found a group of Russian alcoholics, I think there were about six of them in the room. And they got together every second night and drank 26 ounces of vodka, and he asked them if he could join them and they said yes, bring your vodka. And he said, well actually I’m not bringing vodka, I’m bringing you something else. And he sat there and he added one per drink for the entire evening. And instead of drinking 26 ounces of vodka, they drank four to six. And the big question was do you want to do this again? And the answer was yes. So it seems to be slightly more attractive than alcohol, but have this very odd self-limiting effect.

PC: And as a researcher, I mean, what questions do you have? What research needs to be done at this point?

MARK HADEN: Well, I hear David saying that he would like to try it with regular drinkers. Personally, I'm more interested in alcoholics. My background is addiction services. I would like to see this given to a population that has known drinking patterns. Once we have established safety, so we do safety piece, which is busily in process, and then give it to a group of alcoholics whose drinking patterns we know. For example, in the Downtown eastside of Vancouver, we know that the average alcoholic drinks 18 drinks per day. I think it’d be really interesting to sit down with them as a group and say hey folks, drinks are on me and then gives them Alcosynth instead and see how many they drink, and if they would prefer it the next day.

PC: Are you as confidence though, as David Nutt seems to be about the safety of this drug?

MARK HADEN: Well, the safety, the preclinical toxicology is in process. I haven't read it yet, but it's in the process of being published, is my understanding. So that piece has to happen first. And then once you've established safety, then we can look at the effectiveness of both being a binge mitigator or a replacement to alcohol.

PC: And what about the addictive nature of alcohol? I mean, David Nutt says that unlike alcohol, Alcosynth simply is not addictive. Is there research to back that up?

MARK HADEN: Well, there isn't any research on anything yet. That's where I come in. I really would like to engage the researchers in looking at that. Now, there’s anecdotal. We start out with just giving it to people and finding out what they do. But it does have this odd satiation effect, which is unique I think. I don't know of anything else that quite has that same effect. And so, you know, based on very preliminary observations, it looks like it isn't addictive. It looks like it has this kind of wall that you hit, which I think might be very useful.

PC: And how soon do you expect to start doing further research on Alcosynth? I mean, to determine all the things that you said have yet to be determined.

MARK HADEN: Well, what I'm intending to do is meet with David Nutt and to pull a group of researchers together and quite frankly just have dinner. And ask that very question of the group, and to be honest I haven't done that yet.

PC: OK. Were you planning on drinking Alcosynth that dinner?

MARK HADEN: Well, to be honest we weren't. We probably were meeting in a normal restaurant.

PC: OK.

MARK HADEN: And I didn't want to have to negotiate that with them.

PC: [laughs] What are your concerns? I mean, do you have concerns about it? I mean, to me as a lay person, this in many ways sounds just too good to be true. Right? I get to drink and then I get to not be hung over and as a social drinker that sounds, well, awesome. But what are your concerns about a new drug that purports to be something of a magic bullet, when we're talking about, you know, the second largest risk factor contributing to mortality?

MARK HADEN: Well, I don't have any concerns yet, because we don't know very much about it yet. You know, it's of interest and I'd like to know more, but there aren’t any current concerns. I think generally speaking, many drugs have come down the pipe have been touted as being absolutely fabulous and they subsequently were proved to not be. So I'm skeptical, I'm open but I mean, as I said this is a substance of interest and if it does serve in our society to replace alcohol with something less harmful, our society as a whole would be healthier. But that's a vision, the reality is a long way away.

PC: Mark Haden, good to talk to you. Thank you.

MARK HADEN: You’re welcome Piya.

PC: Mark Haden is an Adjunct Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health, focusing on drug policy research. He was in Vancouver. While the science of Alcosynth might be new, humans have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years. To put the promise of Alcosynth into historical context, I'm joined by Christine Sismondo. She is a historian and the author of America Walks Into a Bar. She's with me here in our Toronto studio. Hello.

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: Good morning.

PC: Canadians walk into a bar as well, right?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: All the time, every day.

PC: What do you think of the idea that people who care about their health will switch to something like Alcosynth, because it has the benefits of the booze buzz without being bad for you?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: I think the first thing that bothers me about this is the idea that most of us drink to get drunk. You know, a lot of us drink in order to taste, you know, specific tannins or vanillins in wine or whiskey. And I think that very few people say I'm out to just get high tonight. You drink for totally different reasons, for how it goes with your food, for how you enjoy the taste.

PC: And so that's the presumption you think that's underlying the pitch, which is that people just want to get drunk, we don't care about the taste, we sort of just say that because it's the easy thing to do.

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not saying that there aren't people who haven't said I would really like to get high tonight. I'm just saying that I think as you get older, the majority of people are drinking for a whole different set of reasons.

PC: I should say the plan is to market this under the name Chaperone.

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: Oh, yeah.

PC: [laughs] What does that tell you?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: Well, I understand that there's an idea of safety that's being sort of floated in this whole thing, but a lot of the risks from alcohol are not actually from the toxins that, you know, they're not just to your liver, a lot of the risks to alcohol involve being out in clubs and making bad decisions, involve falling down, involve drinking and driving. And nobody's really addressing any of these issues. It's not clear to me that they're going to be addressed at all.

PC: So the issues that David Nutt brought up. So the marketing of it, this is going to make the social drinker not have a hangover the next morning. Do you see an appeal in being able to drink without having a hangover? Because I do. [laughs]

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: [laughs] Well, in fact, I actually think that hangover is kind of a good thing once in awhile, it sort of reminds you that you're human and that you should, you know, keep things in check and you're not, you know, Superman or anything along those lines. Sure, I understand why you would not want to have a hangover. The question to me is also why is it being marketed as an alcohol substitute at all? It shares nothing in common chemically with alcohol. So it's almost as though it's like being introduced as something that we're really familiar with. Why isn't it just being called a party drug?

PC: Hm. You know, humans have been drinking as long as basically humans have been around. A long history of drinking alcohol. It's part of many societies, many cultures, and so just in that historical and cultural context, how would you see something like Alcosynth fitting into that?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: I mean, there's no question that everybody who's doing studies in this field is seeing that alcohol and human civilization kind of grew up hand in hand, and that the two go together, and that we might not have bonded in groups in quite the same way without alcohol, and that it may have led to his being more successful as a species. But I think that that’s sort of the promise that they're holding out about Alcosynth, but part of the mystery of alcohol is that we don't really understand exactly how it functions. You know, we don't really know exactly every day whether you're going to get drunk off one glass of wine or be able to have a nice night with, you know, two or three glasses. So to me there's something about the predictability that doesn't quite fit into the way that we've used alcohol in the past.

PC: So the unexpected is part of the lure for us of alcohol?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: Absolutely, I think so. You know, not knowing exactly what it's going to taste like. And for most drugs in general, there's sort of a, the whole idea of a trip is that you don't know where it's going to go.

PC: What have been the other attempts at sort of making the new alcoholic? Like there have been other attempts to do something like Alcosynth, is there one that stands out for you?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: No, actually what I was thinking about is the fact that synthetic opioids have not been successful. That they've actually caused a huge problem. So there are these unintended consequences with these drugs that we don't really know very much about. We can't really see how they're going to get used or what effects they're going to have. At least with alcohol, I mean, we know that it does terrible things, absolutely, I'm not trying to be an apologist for it. But we have thousands of years of experience with dealing with it. This is a brand new thing that nobody knows what it is.

PC: And so, I mean to our last guest’s point, he wants to do the research and see. If it is deemed safe, I mean, this would have to go through probably a lot of regulation and various other things, it's not just going to suddenly show up in our in our bars next week. I mean, do you think societally, I guess this is my question, I mean, how hooked are we to alcohol and experience? And I don't mean addicted, I mean, just hooked culturally to alcohol, to replace it with some kind of synthetic?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: I mean, I don't see the charm. A lot of what I write about is the taste, and, you know, the providence and the production of the thing. And it's sort of, once you take away, and you say well, we made it in a lab and, you know, it started in this kind of environment, I think it takes away a lot of the charm and the mystery that we sort of feel that alcohol has.

PC: And to David Nutt’s and to Mark Haden's other point, which is this could work well for people who have problems with alcohol, that are addicts. That this could be a good substitute for them, what do you think of that?

CHRISTINE SISMONDO: So could moderation. I mean, that's really the goal is to try to get people to drink a little bit differently, to drink a little bit more carefully. And most people as they grow up, they become better at it all on their own. And a lot of the misuse of alcohol has to do with age and probably poverty. So I think maybe we should direct a little bit of sort of attention in that direction instead.

PC: Good to talk to you, thank you for coming in. Christine Sismondo is a historian and she is the author of America Walks Into a Bar. But she was here in our Toronto studio. So what do you think about Alcosynth? Do you think it's something that you would prefer over alcohol? Should it be made available, or do you think that we should stick with the good old fashioned stuff? Do let us know. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, if you want to tweet at me or and I'll probably tweet you back, my handle is @Piya, P-i-y-a. On Facebook you can find us there as well, facebook.com/cbcthecurrent is the way to find us on Facebook. Or you can e-mail us by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you are there you can click on the Contact Us link. As we say, we'd like to hear from you on the stories that we cover here on The Current, past and present. And if you have an idea for the future, let us know as well. Well, that is The Current for today. Earlier we were talking about bluefin tuna and how much protection the stocks need right now at this time. Well, back in the day when tuna were plentiful, the biggest Atlantic bluefin tuna ever caught was reeled in off the coast of Nova Scotia. That was in 1975, ‘79 pardon me, and the fish was just shy of 1,500 pounds or 700 kilograms. It's one big fish. The fisherman was a charter boat operator from Prince Edward Island who was enjoying a day off and fishing on someone else's vessel. The CBC's Don Harron covered that story. So we're going to leave you today with that story from our CBC archives. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, thank you for lending us your ear here on The Current, until tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

DON HARRON: Ken Fraser is a tuna charter operator from North Lake, PEI, and two weeks ago he pulled in the largest tuna on record. It weighed 1,496 pounds. That is a lot of tuna sandwiches. Do you have to be a pretty wealthy fellow to go tuna fishing?

FISHERMAN: Not really, but it helps.

DON HARRON: How long did it take you to land it?

FISHERMAN: 45 minutes.

DON HARRON: Where do you feel the strain most?

FISHERMAN: Well, you have to fight the fish with your back and your legs. And it's quite a chore.

DON HARRON: What if you've got a rookie fisherman out there, a green horn and he's in the chair and he's in trouble, what do you do?

FISHERMAN: Well, we could naturally help him if he was in serious trouble, but it would disqualify a record catch. But we show them what to do, and we haven't lost too many anglers overboard.

DON HARRON: [laughs]

[Music: Extro]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

October 11, 2016 full episode transcript

More Stories Like This