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The Current Transcript for November 17, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

That dark-hearted behaviour—lying, cheating, stealing, purposeful, intentional excessive use of force—then we're going to fire people.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Bob Paulson was adamant that his officers who got out of line, broke the rules or the law would face serious consequences. That was the RCMP commissioner back in 2012 when he was brand new in his post. Four years on, a CBC News investigation looking at RCMP officer infractions is raising questions about how punishment is doled out within the force. We're going inside the RCMP in just a moment. Also on The Current today, breaking free from the rest.

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[Sound: Clapping]

Let June the 23^rd go down in our history as our Independence Day.

[Sound: Crowd cheering]

PC: That's British politician Nigel Farage on the day of the Brexit victory—a day when Britain said they'd go it alone. Last week Americans endorsed a similar vision by voting for the NAFTA-hating Donald Trump. And this week Russia is the latest in the exodus of nations from the International Criminal Court. A new post co-operative world seems to be taking shape. We'll talk about what it could mean for peace, trade and stability. Then after that—

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Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.

PC: There's fiction and then there's fact, but these days it seems there's a narrowing line between the two. So what's a perfect word to describe that? We’ll reveal the word that's going to be on a lot more people's lips when we find out Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2016. Hi. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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CBC obtains data on 700 disciplinary cases of RCMP members breaking rules or law

Guests: Alison Crawford

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PC: To serve and protect—officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that not only meets but exceeds the high expectations of Canadian citizens. But that doesn't always happen and very little is known about how RCMP officers who break the rules or the law are dealt with within the force. Using access to information, CBC/Radio-Canada has obtained a trove of data on some 700 cases where RCMP members were disciplined. The data covers officers in five provinces over a five-year period that began in 2010. And the offences that officers were charged with are serious: poaching caribou, leaving a loaded gun at a gas station, sexual offences involving children and even failing to respond to calls for help. For more on how these officers were disciplined, the CBC's Alison Crawford joins us from Ottawa.

PC: Alison, hello.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Good morning, Piya.

PC: Okay, let us start with this story about caribou poaching. Tell me what happened there.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, this is a case of an officer in northern Manitoba who on three occasions hunted caribou without a license. And on one of these occasions, he actually used an RCMP aircraft to circle some herds, round them up and he landed the plane in Lac Brochet, then he hopped on an RCMP snowmobile, went back to the location then shot and killed four caribou. So yeah. Notable for you know. A Canadian crime.

PC: Yeah. He's on the job using the helicopter doing what he's not supposed to do on the job. What happens to him? He's caught out? And then what happens?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, we're actually not sure because the documents leave us wanting. It does say that the allegations were substantiated but it does not indicate how the Mountie was punished. So last week I asked the RCMP for more information on that case and 26 cases as well. And they pretty much told me to file another access to information request to get that information.

PC: Okay. So but they say the documents, the allegations were substantiated. That means—I am guessing that there's some hint there—that there was some kind of “investigation” done by the RCMP.

ALISON CRAWFORD: That's right. So the RCMP when it disciplines the officers, it has an internal, very formal sort of set up to go in and investigate its own officers. Sometimes it’s a big investigation and sometimes it's very you know minor for minor infractions.

PC: Alright. Tell us more about these documents that you got your hands on. What kind of information did you get through access to information?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, as you mentioned that we did get data from five provinces but considering that one third of Mounties are posted in British Columbia, it is a good sample. We're only missing Alberta and the Atlantic provinces. And what we got varies a little bit because the RCMP provided us with information in four incompatible formats. So for some areas we have colorful summaries of allegations such as the caribou and in others we have very little information about the complaints. In all, there is 1,253 and more than half of them were considered to be founded. The documents do include findings of those investigations and then how the discipline was doled out, where there was a finding and you know just kind of, it gives you a little bit of a sense of how the discipline was doled out.

PC: Alright. So tell us about some other cases of misconduct that you know as you're poring through these documents that sort of stood out for you.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah. One case that jumped out at me was where Mounties, a group of them, tied a man into a restraint chair in a jail cell and then put a spit guard on him which is to prevent him from spitting on officers, and then sprayed him with pepper spray when he was in full restraints. As well as a guy who amassed his own private collection of pornography from forensic files. And then there's a fellow who was reprimanded for cheating on a score card at a charity golf tournament. So you see it does really run the full gamut. But I think that the allegations that really stood out were the ones that were potentially criminal such as the possession of child pornography, trafficking cocaine and lying under oath.

PC: Okay. As you just said, you mentioned the word criminal. Some of the things you just mentioned are against the law of the land. Do we know if any of those officers who were accused of this stuff were charged with a criminal offense?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, some of the documents tell us that yes, something had been you know referred to Abbotsford or Vancouver police force for investigation, others note that Crown approved charges. But other documents don't say anything at all. Some just say you know the officer retired or resigned and they don't say whether an investigation had ever been ordered. Last week we asked the RCMP for details on these other 26 cases that could potentially be criminal. And last night again they said please go through ATIP to get that information. That said, I did recognize several of the cases in those documents. For instance there are currently two Mounties—one in British Columbia and another in Nova Scotia—who are facing charges for trafficking cocaine. In another case there was a Mountie charged with dangerous driving after a high speed chase that led to the death of a pedestrian and he was acquitted by the court.

PC: It seems to me though Alison, that despite you getting your hands on some of the stuff, this information, that there are gaps in here. I mean the Mountie who caught poaching caribou for example. We're not even sure what happened to him or others.

ALISON CRAWFORD: And actually, I’m surprised I never heard about that case because I'm pretty plugged into the community. I hear about these kinds of stories. But yes, it is the case. There's a Mountie in February 2015 who had—and I quote from the document—inappropriately accessed RCMP electronic database, electronic database, set inappropriate pictures of a sexual nature to a youth and used his position as a member to pursue a relationship with that youth. Here the RCMP moved to fire the gentlemen but it doesn't say what actually happened and I asked for clarification but didn't get it. But most of the documents are pretty clear about the corrective measures taken by the RCMP.

PC: That’s a pretty—that’s a serious allegation.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, yeah. And frankly, when something—when someone—when the RCMP moves to dismiss someone, that information is made public on their website when they post a notice of a hearing so I don't really understand why I would have to go back to access to information to find out whether that person was indeed fired.

PC: Okay. Or charged for that matter as well.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, the charge would probably have to come from a Crown or another police agency.

PC: Okay. And I know there's a whole gamut here, but what kind of discipline do Mounties tend to receive internally?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, it is everything from a verbal dressing down or counselling to docking pay, suspensions and dismissal because this really—the RCMP disciplines pretty much every infraction, even the most minor things such as not filling out a time card on time. And more than half of the allegations that the RCMP found to be substantiated fell into three groups that we kind of identified ourselves: information leaks and lies, dereliction of duty and mischief. All the other categories such as domestic violence, harassment and firearms offenses had relatively low numbers of complaints.

PC: Okay. So I understand some of the ones that you just mentioned there but help me understand this one. So what sort of things, what sort of misconduct would fall under the banner “information leaks and lies”?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Okay. One would be lying to your supervisor about something and then also is the unauthorized use of police data databases. This is where an officer might scan a license plate of an ex-wife's new boyfriend or conduct inappropriate searches of private information for friends and family. I asked Senator Vern White about this and he says you know these are very serious infractions. Privacy is paramount these days. He's a retired senior Mountie and used to be the chief of police for the city of Ottawa and Durham Region police forces in Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

I think it’s very serious. Look, nobody should have the ability to access private information about other people unless it's for their work. I think it's taken seriously. It wasn’t probably 15 years ago but I think it's taken seriously. And I do see that we're very—when in policing, we're in a very lucky position of holding information nobody else has access to. But it's a fragile relationship. If we want to lose that opportunity, we will abuse that opportunity.

ALISON CRAWFORD: And for the most part Piya, those caught snooping around in police databases were subjected to a reprimand and special training.

PC: Alright. So that's sort of that category, Allison. What about dereliction of duty? That's—again, I think that's when Mounties don't do their job properly.

ALISON CRAWFORD: That’s right. Yeah. And this is the only area where we saw consistent climb in the number of complaints over the last five years. You know in the first nine months of last year, there were 47 complaints and more than half were substantiated. Now this is the kind of stuff that will concern Canadians because this is about you know stuff that can affect people calling for help. So in two instances there was a Mountie who took way too long to respond to calls for help, including 45 minutes it took him to get around to responding to an urgent call from a babysitter that a man was kicking down the front door of the apartment she was in and that person received a reprimand. In another case, an officer didn't investigate a complaint about sexual assault properly and then lied about it to their supervisor. That person was reprimanded and ordered to undergo special training as well as being placed under close supervision.

PC: And again in those two cases, reprimand is left open to interpretation about specifically what that was.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Generally a reprimand is a written note to file from a senior officer, probably the commanding officer for the detachment.

PC: Okay. So it goes on your file.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah.

PC: On your personnel file.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah. That’s right.

PC: Okay. How well, overall, as you went through these documents did you get a sense that the discipline that the RCMP is doling out you know suits the infraction?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, overall and you know I covered the RCMP so I have experience with people who have been punished far too severely for minor things and maybe not seriously enough for other things. I do get the sense though that overall, the discipline system would meet the expectations for most Canadians especially after a new disciplinary regime came into effect in November 2014 which made it a lot easier for the force to fire members accused of those gravest offenses. You know the RCMP has that paramilitary culture so in many instances, they do treat offenses tougher than they would treat them you know at the CBC or in a civil service. So not paying your company credit card bill on time or filling out that late time card is subject to discipline.

PC: Hmm. I think a lot of people would be in a bit of trouble.

ALISON CRAWFORD: I’d be in trouble every week.

PC: Yeah. Okay. But there are other things that you know probably seem more shocking to you in what you found.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that jumps out is you know officers—this is a small but steady number over the years, so very small, like under 10 a year of these cases where officers leave their service pistol somewhere in a public place. So in very Canadian fashion, there are a couple of cases where officers left their guns at Tim Hortons, a gas station or a restaurant. And these are usually subject to a reprimand and special training and that may not sound serious to us, but you know think about it: pretty much every instance—because I've spoken to a number of people who are familiar with these cases—pretty much every instance where an officer forgets their weapon in a restaurant is when they're there to use the bathroom. They're in a rush. They have to get back to their cruiser. They wear very heavy belts out of all sorts of tools and stuff all over it. And when they take them off, they don't want you know it lying on the floor where everyone can see there's a gun on the floor. So they may take the weapon out, stick it on the back of the toilet and forget it. I mean I am guilty of leaving on many occasions a phone, wallet or purse, something behind in a public place. So yes, losing your sidearm is dangerous but it also rarely happens to the same officer more than once because you know once you're known among your colleagues as the guy who left his gun at Timmies, you know it's unlikely you're going to do that again. And it also warns your colleagues that they don't want that mockery as well.

PC: Fair enough. Okay. Canada's a big country. RCMP officers in many cities, towns, hamlets—is the discipline that you looked at, I mean is it sort of constant and consistent?

ALISON CRAWFORD: It is when it's really serious. So when the RCMP wants to fire someone, that system is centralized and has been for a very long time. Anything that falls short of a firing offense though, is left up to the Mountie’s supervisor in an informal process which is not as easy to track. You know for instance one member who lied to his superior about a fitness test was docked two weeks of annual leave. But someone who was you know that guy who was pepper sprayed in that jail cell, the Mountie who conducted that received special training and counselling. So you know without paying close attention to what's happening in every area of the country, in every detachment division, the police force is sort of flying blind when it comes to discipline according to a woman I spoke to named Louise Morel. She is a lawyer here in Ottawa in private practice now but she's retired RCMP chief and superintendent who used to be in charge of professional standards for the national police force.

SOUNDCLIP

I doubt that they are. Unless you're seeking dismissal for whatever reason, there's no way to gauge that. I don't think they have a system in place right now where all discipline that's being given provincially or by division if you're talking RCMP, is being reported up to the review authority. And if it is being reported up to the review authority, how effective is he doing it? Because I know of cases where he's aware of it and it takes six months or media attention before he actually does something or attempts to do something.

PC: Alison, she's basically saying there you know that the RCMP can't track its own discipline misconduct.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah, yeah. I know that the clip—I should have said before the clip—I asked her if members are being disciplined appropriately and consistently and she said I doubt that they are. And she does have some concerns about how well it’s tracking this. You know I wanted to talk to the RCMP about how it keeps an eye on everything but it said it couldn't accommodate our request for an interview. But late last night, a spokesperson sent me an e-mail saying the force has started using an interactive case management database full of information submitted from each division that is monitored by headquarters for inconsistencies. And the e-mail also told us that it has set up an early intervention system to identify officers who need extra help.

PC: Okay. And just for the record, our audience knows we requested an interview with the RCMP as well for this morning. It declined that request. Alison, getting back to that question of discipline, I gather that many Mounties resign or retire if they come up against serious allegations.

ALISON CRAWFORD: Yeah, that's right and it is kind of a joke within the RCMP. Whenever someone is caught doing something egregious, members will tell me oh, let me guess, you know he or she retired with a full pension. And that's especially when it's a high ranking officer.

PC: Alright. So is there—when you're sifting through these documents, is there you know good news, so to speak?

ALISON CRAWFORD: There is. There’s some very good news when it comes to complaints about excessive use of force. Those numbers have plummeted over the last five years and the drop coincides with the decision you probably remember taken in 2010 by the RCMP to change its rules on how and when to use stun guns you know known as Tasers. Louise Morel says that also has to do with changes in basic training.

SOUNDCLIP

The RCMP has always been really good at that. If the public complaint commission or the RCMP identified an issue, excessive use of force for instance, the RCMP will immediately look at their training program and make modifications at basic training and the training is night and day of what it was in the 1980s or the 1990s. So if there's one thing that I would say the RCMP is renowned for, it’s their training.

PC: Alison, you've painted quite a picture of what, from the documents that you gathered. I guess generally—I just want to round things off—what is sort of the takeaway message for us here?

ALISON CRAWFORD: Well, I think there are lessons around accountability and also with consistency. I hope to speak with the RCMP in the future more about this. Also you know one of the people I spoke to, Senator White, talked about how when they created the public safety department more than 10 years ago, there was a real understanding in the policing community that the federal government would set standards, national standards, for stuff like discipline. So maybe we can hope to speak with the public safety minister about this as well.

PC: Alison, thank you.

ALISON CRAWFORD: You're welcome.

PC: Alison Crawford, senior reporter with CBC national news in Ottawa. Josh Patterson has been listening in to what Alison's been saying. He's a lawyer and executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. He's in our Vancouver studio. Hello.

JOSH PATTERSON: Good morning.

PC: Are you surprised to hear that the RCMP doesn't appear to have a searchable national database or at least hasn't for some time tracking misconduct involving its officers?

JOSH PATTERSON: No, Piya. I'm not at all surprised. In fact the CBC has—an earlier investigation a few years ago had revealed that they were not doing this kind of tracking and Commissioner Paulson had admitted at the time—and this was in 2013—exactly what Madame Morel just said, which is that they really had no way of tracking incidents of serious misconduct at a national level and therefore no way of knowing whether they had a problem force wide, what the trend lines were, et cetera. So it's encouraging to hear—as of the e-mail last night that Alison received—that they're now trying to do some of this tracking so that they can intervene early and see what's going on more carefully.

PC: Let me ask you this because this sort of jumped out for me—I mean the RCMP national force has a national code of conduct and yet, you know talking to Alison, the data that she received didn't provide that much detail about individual incidents. But it does sort of seem like that discipline for similar events differed from detachment to detachment, province to province. Why would discipline—given that it has a national code of conduct—differ for similar incidents?

JOSH PATTERSON: Well, you have a force with you know 30,000 officers and over 700 detachments. And so if the people who are giving out the discipline for less serious offenses are in each of those 750 offices in all the different communities, it's easy to imagine how you would start to see some inconsistencies in how it's applied. There may be very good reasons to explain why a certain incident is treated one way in Corner Brook and treated another way in Kelowna. And that might depend on the facts of the case that might not even show up in the data. So you know you could have someone who's disciplined perhaps more seriously for something minor but they may have a longer record of screwing up.

PC: And the local boss, so to speak, would probably know more about that.

JOSH PATTERSON: Exactly. And that wouldn't show up on your data that doesn't have sort of the individualized histories.

PC: Okay. Here's another thing that jumped out for me when Alison was talking: in some instances it looks like officers—I don’t know if this is the right word—encouraged to resign rather than you know kind of deal with it, face the discipline. What do you think of that?

JOSH PATTERSON: Well, in some cases there's actually a direction to resign and the member is given an opportunity to resign rather than be dismissed.

PC: Is that like go quietly kind of thing?

JOSH PATTERSON: I guess there are some cases where that might be appropriate. It would depend on the circumstances. There may be reasons why administratively it's better for someone to just say you know what, you got me—I'm going to quit, as opposed to having to go through a disciplinary hearing. But where it would be quite concerning is where you have quite serious allegations of misconduct and officers are allowed to sort of go off into the night without facing the consequences for their actions and potentially with you know with full pensions and so forth, that given the severity of their misconduct might not be justified. Now there may be lots of cases where you know someone's really screwed up, they deserve to lose their job but perhaps they don't deserve to lose the security that they've built up over many years in their pension. It's really individualized. We've certainly seen here in BC where I'm sitting, cases at the provincial level where even police chiefs avoided serious misconduct findings and investigations by quitting and then they pop up at another police force. So you know that's not something that breeds a lot of public confidence in police forces nationally.

PC: I have about 20 seconds. So in a word, can you suggest what this latest data says about the overall health of the RCMP?

JOSH PATTERSON: Well, I think they're trying. I think there's been lots of commissions and various things about use of force and the use of Tasers over the last number of years that have brought attention to the way they do their business, in the way they discipline their members and it's clear that they're making efforts. But this is a huge organization. It takes a long time to change police cultures. It takes a long time to change the way they do things.

PC: Josh Patterson, thank you for your time.

JOSH PATTERSON: Thank you.

PC: Josh Patterson is a lawyer and executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Josh was in our Vancouver studio. The CBC News is headed your way next. Then the question: whatever happened to the community of nations? Are we living in a post co-operative world? That discussion is headed your way. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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From Brexit to Trump, are we entering a post co-operative world?

Guests: Alex Whiting, Bessma Momani, Barry Cooper

PC: Hi. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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PC: Still to come, it's Thursday, the time of the week that we check in on your thoughts. The Current’s Friday host Duncan McCue will join me in half an hour to check in on another week's worth of your feedback on the stories that we've been following. We'll also check in with someone from the Oxford Dictionary to hear what's been chosen as the word of the year for 2016. It's a goody. But first, divided we stand. Soon after Donald Trump surprised so many around the world by winning the US presidency, NATO's Chief Jens Stoltenberg issued a warning that going it alone is not an option either for Europe or for the United States. Yet going it alone seems to be the flavor of the moment these days—not just for the protectionist and isolationist minded incoming Trump administration but in Europe, where nationalist parties are on the rise and Britons have voted to leave the European Union. And now it's happening to one of the key institutions of the international community.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: South Africa, the economic giant, all of the continent announced they are to begin the process of exiting the International Criminal Court, a move that has also left the world’s justice institution a little bit shaken. Now the backlash have is not only from the two countries, as other countries like Kenya and Uganda have contemplated the idea.

VOICE 2: Under a directive signed by President Vladimir Putin, Russia says it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court. Adding that during the 14 years of the court's work, it passed only four sentences, having spent over a billion dollars.

PC: The past two months has seen an exodus of countries withdrawing from the ICC, the International Criminal Court. South Africa, Gambia and Burundi left last month. Gambia accused the court of the persecution and humiliation of people of colour. This week Russia withdrew from the court. It was sparked in part over growing international criticism of its participation in the Syrian war and its annexation of Crimea. We're going to speak more about the wider trend of going it alone around the world in just a little bit. But first, I want to talk more about what's going on at the ICC. Alex Whiting is a professor at Harvard Law School and a former prosecutions coordinator at the court. He's in Boston. Hello.

ALEX WHITING: Good morning, Piya.

PC: Let's start with what happened this week: Russia's withdrawal from the ICC. How big of a deal is that?

ALEX WHITING: Well, to be clear that Russia was not actually a state party to the ICC. It had signed the statute but never ratified it. And so it's “withdrawal” doesn't have any major practical consequences. But it's a significant symbolic move and it's part of a trend, as I think you said in your opening, of countries pulling away not just from the court but from international engagement generally.

PC: Well, let's talk about that trend because yes, indeed, three African countries—Gambia, Burundi, South Africa—withdrew from the court last month and then now Russia. So if we look at that trend line, if I can call it that, what does this mean for the court's legitimacy going forward?

ALEX WHITING: So I think it's important to keep it in perspective. This is not going to mean the end of the International Criminal Court or the end of the International Criminal Justice Project. Even after those three countries leave, there will still be 121 countries that are members of the court. But it's definitely a setback or a blow to the court. And I think for two reasons: the first is that the court's legitimacy depends on continuing to approach universality. As I said, there are now 124 countries, soon 121. There's a number of big countries that are left out of the court. But the trend has been towards universality and that's important because if you don't have universality, then you start to have accusations of bias. Why do we have accountability in Africa but not in Syria, for example, and that undermines the whole project. The second reason I think it's a setback is it sets a dangerous precedent of being able to pull out of the commitment to the court. The court, the Rome statute was signed in 1998 and countries since then—

PC: That’s what created the court.

ALEX WHITING: Right. That's right. And since 1998, countries have been signing onto the court year after year and we've had countries signing on but no country has ever left. And this is the first time that a country has left and that sets a bad precedent that when a country starts to be scrutinized by the court, it pulls out.

PC: Well, that's kind of the question here, right? Like Russia withdraws a day after the court publishes this report criticizing it for the annexation of Crimea. And so it sort of seems like hey, if I don't like what the court’s saying or doing about me, I'll just pull out and withdraw if I feel threatened.

ALEX WHITING: That's correct. I think that's actually the most concerning part of this. And that was also true in particular for Burundi, which was also under scrutiny from the court. And for example, if the court starts looking at the Philippines which is a state party, I would not be surprised if the Philippines took a similar path. In order for that to be reversed, there's going to have to be a renewed international commitment to keeping countries in. They'll have to be a diplomatic cost to pulling out of the court. And up to this year, that perceived cost has kept countries in even when they were unhappy with the work of the court. But something has changed this year. The countries no longer perceive that there will be any cost of withdrawing and so they are starting to do so.

PC: Well, it's interesting that you bring up this year because this kind of, you know these withdrawals you know fit into what seems to be somewhat of a pattern of countries saying we don't want to be part of some international organization or some international group and we're just going to—you know more isolationist to be clear about that. And so is that where this fits in? It's just like a lot of countries are saying I don't want to be part of that international institution. I'm just—we’re going to go it alone.

ALEX WHITING: Yes. I absolutely think that this trend fits into the broader narrative that you alluded to in your opening and in your question just now. You know we've seen Brexit, Donald Trump. And I think that countries are under various pressures, economic pressures, and are turning towards isolationism away from international commitment and engagement. And the court is suffering for that. The court is—the ICC has come a long way. It's come much further in these years than anybody ever expected. But it is a very fragile institution that depends on international cooperation and if countries start to turn away, the court suffers.

PC: So you said it's come further. It's come a long way. So this is a court that's—you know 1998, it’s now 2016. It’s not that long. It's come a long way. That's just to me that you know that people thought when it was founded that it wouldn't be where it is today in 2016.

ALEX WHITING: I think that's right. And it's easy now to look back and say oh, the court has only done a few prosecutions in its early years and that was the criticism from Russia. But it's a matter of perspective. This court is only 14 years old which in the development of a judicial system and certainly an international judicial system is a blink of an eye. And I can tell you that nobody in 1998 thought that the court would be where it is today in terms of the number of countries that have committed to the court, the number of cases that were brought, the successful prosecutions, some unsuccessful prosecutions also, the two security council referrals of Sudan and Libya. So it's a matter of perspective and expectations. And the court—the court has come a long way and maybe one way of looking at this, what's happening this year, is that it's a kind of market correction that the court has. It has come a long way and now there's a little bit of a retrenchment.

PC: And when markets correct, forecasters look ahead to see the future so it would be that forecaster. I mean what do you see for the future of the court in the next few years?

ALEX WHITING: Well, I think honestly and for me sadly because I believe in the court and I'm committed to it, I think the next few years are going to be difficult. This trend that we've been talking about corresponds with the court beginning to look at situations that implicate big countries that are not part of the court so Georgia, Ukraine, soon Afghanistan, also Palestine. All of those situations implicate non-state parties that are powerful in the world and if we're in this atmosphere of retrenchment and isolation and non-international engagement, those are going to be difficult years for the court. But the court is—the court history in the long term I think is going to be ups and downs. And I think that we have an institution that's here to stay. We have precedent in the ad hoc tribunals—Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the ICC—that are important markers and precedents. And I think that in time the world will turn back to this project into a commitment of accountability.

PC: Alex Whiting, thank you for your insights. Appreciate them.

ALEX WHITING: Thank you.

PC: Alex Whiting is a professor at Harvard Law School and a former prosecution coordinator at the International Criminal Court. Alex Whiting is in Boston. From the ICC to the other examples of going it alone we've seen around the world as of late, the world appears as if it could be at a crossroads when it comes to international cooperation and perhaps even entering a post co-operative phase. We have two guests standing by now to help us shed some light. Bessma Momani is a senior fellow at CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation. She's also a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Bessma Momani is in Vancouver today. Barry Cooper is political science professor at the University of Calgary and a research fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He's in Calgary. Hello to both of you.

BARRY COOPER: Good morning.

BESSMA MOMANI: Hello.

PC: I've said it several times already: going it alone. So let me start with you, Barry, and ask you where are we when it comes to the state of global cooperation? Are we in a time of going it alone?

BARRY COOPER: Well, I think we are. Professor Whiting said something like a market correction. I would say this is part of a much longer term, a political rhythm of globalization and de-globalization. If you look at the world a century ago, it was very similar to what we have now. And I mean the result of that of course was World War I, where countries did decide to go it alone. So it's essentially I think a political rhythm. I mean who knows what causes it? But it seems to be there. The same thing happened a century before that. So this is not really big news.

PC: Well, Bessma Momani, it may not be big news but give me your insights into it. Where are we when it comes to the state of global cooperation? Because as a layperson, it seems it's all changing pretty fast.

BESSMA MOMANI: It is changing pretty fast but I don't think that we're quite there yet where countries will be going it alone, and partly because the issues that we're dealing with globally today just can't be handled alone. Whether we're talking about the environment and climate change and health and pandemics, cyber security, international financial crises, there is value in working together and it's frankly cheaper. I mean you know there's burden sharing when you have an organization whereby countries pooled in their resources and also use the organization to get things done that they can't do alone. So I think there's value in countries. Most countries recognize that. I think the ICC of course stands out and similarly with Brexit. I don't see this necessarily as a trend of countries exiting as much as I see you know this is a reflection of the populist trend we see across the world where there's just increased mistrust in government. The mistrust in government where people feel that government is out of touch with the common person is carrying over to international organizations where people see and governments are arguing that somehow in the case of for example Brexit, you know the officials at Brussels are out of touch with the needs of the states or the common person. So I think that we can see the same kind of frustration at the domestic level now carrying over to international level.

PC: Yeah. It seems to be sort of like a resentment if that's the appropriate word. But Bessma, let me carry on with you. You know one of the many of the international institutions that we're talking about—and you know Barry alluded to World War I—the UN's created, it grew out of World War II. So just put all of this sort of going it alone stuff within the context of somewhat modern history. What do we need to remember about these times?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I mean I think that what we need to remember is that you know these organizations were created with chief objectives. In the case of the UN, it was about trying to maintain peace. But you know the challenge—and this is not to say these organizations are perfect, quite on the contrary—they need deep, deep reforms. In the case of the UN, Security Council is in need of deep reforms that no longer reflects the power structure of today. They're often deadlocked because of the sort of polarization that we see amongst members, the fact that the Security Council members each have a veto power and so nothing can get done. We see a similar kind of deadlock at the World Trade Organization, even the IMF and the World Bank. I mean again, their very structure of governance is antiquated. They're often been written in the 1940s and the world economy and the world political system no longer reflects that time period. So there is a lot of need for deep, deep reforms but I wouldn't say that these organizations are useless. It's just that we need to I think invest more in making sure that they're modernized.

PC: And Barry Cooper, when you hear that word reform and we look at let's just say, for example, the United Nations. Many people say you know what, it can't be reformed. It can't be fixed. It's too broken. Do you see something like the UN being able—an institution that can be fixed?

BARRY COOPER: Well, in fact I don't think it can be fixed, not for quite the same reasons that Bessma said. But cooperation in international politics depends on the interests of states. That was true in 1945 which created the UN and it's true today. The UN then is certainly not what the UN is today now. I mean after all, Japan and Germany was the object of the enmity of the UN in 1945 and they are people, or they are countries rather that normal people would think ought to be on the Security Council. So I mean a lot of things have changed. And if we look at things in international politics without taking into account the interests of sovereign states, we're just going to miss an enormous amount of reality.

PC: Hmm. So do you see there being like this fundamental problem with sort of the philosophy underlying international institutions?

BARRY COOPER: Yes because it doesn't take into account the basis of it and that is that sovereign states have to see a reason to cooperate. So a lot of the technical stuff of the UN is in everyone's interest including things like cyber security. That's even in the interests of both the Western world and China, if we can you know get the Chinese to understand it that way. But things like the airplane administration or the World Health Organization, even parts of UNESCO do good things but most of it seems to me to be kind of verbal froth that really doesn't mean very much to anybody except the people who are sitting in a council in New York.

PC: Alright, I want to play a bit of tape. This is from yesterday. President Obama, the US president was in Greece. Here's some of what he had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

This impulse to pull back from a globalized world is understandable. If people feel that they're losing control of their future, they will push back. We have seen it here in Greece. We've seen that across Europe. We've seen in the United States. We saw in the vote in Britain to leave the EU. We cannot sever the connections that have enabled so much progress and so much wealth, for when competition for resources is perceived as zero sum, we put ourselves on the path to conflict. But I have argued that the current path of globalization demands a course correction. In the years and decades ahead, our countries have to make sure that the benefits of an integrated global economy are more broadly shared by more people.

PC: Bessma Momani, you know I remember not so many years ago we'd be having conversations talking about the fear and loathing and the concerns about globalization and here we’re you know in 2016 talking about the fears of not globalizing anymore. Does our current globalization path require, as the US president suggests, this course correction, that this is the only way forward?

BESSMA MOMANI: Absolutely. And you know I mean you know international organizations don't die. I mean we know this as a fact, with exception of the League of Nations that basically was reborn as the UN. They don't die because they're too expensive to recreate. But what we can see for example is parallel organizations that compete with international organizations. So you know with the WTO for example, we're now seeing the creation of TPP and these other sort of what we call plurilaterals to basically compete with them. And in the case of the IMF, actually the G-20 was created to basically compete with the IMF because they weren't able to keep up with the times and reform their institutions so there's no worry about I think you know international cooperation or international organizations dying. But I do think it does say a lot about how international cooperation needs to be invested in constantly and it's countries like Canada, Germany and others—unfortunately the US I think is going to the policy of retrenchment—that need to keep reminding not just the world but also their citizens of the value of these organizations.

PC: We're going to talk about trade in a minute but Barry, let me get your thoughts on this because you know Bessma said they don't die, they don't go away but maybe they become irrelevant. And so do we not, as President Obama said, put ourselves on the path to conflict and risk gains and prosperities if we don't work together globally?

BARRY COOPER: It's as if we're not on a path to conflict now. The number of wars, the number of people who have been killed in military conflicts since the end of World War II is enormous. The UN's been there. It has done really very little. It's done a few places in Europe where there has been—it’s been in the interests of the parties that host peacekeepers to accept them. But the idea that the UN or other multilateral organizations prevents conflict between states I think is simply—it's a pie in the sky wish but it's certainly not true and it's not borne out by the evidence. So yeah of course, there’s always a threat of conflict but we've had conflicts you know for the last couple of generations.

PC: Let's talk about where Bessma raised just a little bit earlier, which is the idea of well, international trade, the idea of prosperity. Donald Trump has vowed to rewrite NAFTA—he’s not a fan of it—not to ratify the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Bessma Momani, compared to the role of international governance institutions—which we’ve largely been talking about—how do you view the role of countries working together towards free trade?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, definitely there's lots of room for improvement there and I think that countries are frustrated with for example the World Trade Organization. And we've seen the Doha round fail and successive rounds not really taking off as a result. And so people are kind of going it alone. But I think cooperatively, you know in a sense, TPP is not you know I think anything more than just taking the trade agenda further but cutting out some countries that are deemed to be less cooperative. Of course, I think if the United States pulls out of this, it does take a very important anchor country out of the conversation. But I still wouldn't be surprised if many countries continue to have the conversation without the US. And this is the challenge I think, you know governments need to sort of explain to their people the value of being a part of these. And if I could just quickly onto the UN, you know the UN was created to prevent conflict between states. But the challenge we have now is we have conflicts within states. It’s internal conflict and that's not a failure of the UN, it's the change of reality. And of course, reform proposals like R2P—the responsibility to protect, a great Canadian Initiative—was meant to sort of address that but we couldn't get the, I think, backing of countries to get behind it. But it's not a failure of the UN as much of I think a reality of how conflict has changed in the more recent times.

PC: Barry Cooper, let me get your thoughts on trade and the global cooperation and you know at least the rhetoric that's been coming out of Donald Trump and possibly the moves that will follow that rhetoric. Where are you on international trade and how it looks going forward?

BARRY COOPER: Well, it's the same reality as with international politics. International trade is not a good in itself. It's a good that is seen that way for the parties that take an interest in it. As it happened, I was in the UK just before the Brexit vote. And you know I was driving around and I was listening to BBC and I, you know I've got a lot of friends who are Brits and I said you guys are going to be out of here because the arguments that were made against Brussels and against the EU were much more persuasive than the reasons for it. It was basically a question of pride and sort of economic benefits. And when those things conflict, pride always wins.

PC: Hmm. I got about two minutes left and I want to touch on one more sort of general area hopefully with both of you and that's military cooperation, institutions like NATO. How important—where is that going, Bessma Momani, moving forward? How important is military cooperation when it comes to NATO-like organizations?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I can tell you having visited Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe recently, no, NATO is vital. You know every country that I was in there I spoke to in terms of the officials, see NATO as being an absolutely valuable partner to their security. And again, this is back to one of the great values of international organizations whether it's NATO and others, is that there is a burden sharing. There is a sharing of costs. And so you know I think that when you sort of think about it, you know having the defense budget of one country to defend against a potential aggression of Russia is not enough. Countries can't do it alone in Eastern Europe. They do need to pull their resources and be able to depend on the structure of NATO and so forth to try and make sure that they not only signal—which is an important way of preventing war, a signal to Russia—that of course the NATO principle of defending all against aggression is going to be enacted, but also quite literally knowing that there are 22 nations that are going to back NATO.

PC: Barry Cooper, I've got about 30 seconds left. What do you think about military sort of you know institution cooperation looking forward?

BARRY COOPER: I agree entirely. The problem is that the Americans have been defending Europe. They've been defending us for a very long time. And if there's one thing that you get out of the message from President-elect Trump, it's we have to start putting more of our own weight. And that certainly includes the Europeans who are way below. They're almost as bad as we are in terms of the amount of GDP that goes to security interest.

PC: Barry Cooper, Bessma Momani, thanks to both of you for talking with us today. Appreciate it.

BESSMA MOMANI: Thank you.

BARRY COOPER: Thank you.

PC: Bessma Momani is a senior fellow at CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation. She's also a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Barry Cooper is a political science professor at the University of Calgary and a research fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Alright. Coming up in our next half hour in just a bit, Duncan McCue going to be here to go through well, the things that you've been talking about, about what you've been hearing on this show: things like Facebook and the US presidential election. Duncan McCue will be back with your letters. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay.

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Facebook, online culture, coarsened political discourse, says Sherry Turkle

Guests: Sherry Turkle

PC: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Your friends sell you things or you let your friends be an advertising medium.

VOICE 2: There is criminal activity going on every day that's facilitated by technology that we aren't acting on.

VOICE 3: Populism is about defining the people as united and homogenous.

VOICE 4: Trump had particularly strong support in areas that are predominantly white and where children are likely to be less well off than their parents.

VOICE 5: This is a program that many people think is generating more threats against the United States than existed before.

PC: Some sounds from the past week here on The Current and as always, we have received lots of feedback from you about the stories we've been covering. Here to help us go through some of your emails, your tweets, your posts is this week's Friday host, Duncan McCue. Duncan, of course, is the host of CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup. Hello.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Hello, Piya Chattopadhyay.

PC: What a week. What a week. It seemed like a long week.

DUNCAN MCCUE: A very busy week.

PC: A very busy week.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Absolutely.

PC: Lots of thoughts. I keep running into people saying you know I'm just thinking about sort of what's happened over the last week with the US election, with Leonard Cohen passing. Anyway.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Still sinking in.

PC: Still sinking in. Okay. Let us get to some of the topics we covered here on The Current this past week. Monday on the show, we focused on US President-elect Donald Trump. He's the most recent high-profile politician to ride a populist wave to power, coming in on the heels of Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and many more. We are asking how populist leaders fare once they actually began to govern. University of Birmingham, Birmingham—I'll get that right—Professor Daniele Albertazzi joined us to help define what exactly populism is.

SOUNDCLIP

Populism is about defining the people as united and homogenous and seeing the establishment—as Trump calls it, or the elite—as inevitably driven by the desire to take away from the people what it belongs to them.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Well, many listeners wrote in about this story. On Facebook, Edward Rundle posts: “Populist leaders don't call their constituents ‘deplorable,’ for one. They don't treat them with disdain and they actually figure out what they're about.”

PC: Cliff Le Jeune disagreed. He emailed: “Does populism make a nation gullible or just lose its ability to see truth? It's a week after the US election and it is apparent that Trump is replacing the establishment with politicians from deep inside the partisan underbelly. Will Canadians be so driven by populist views as to endorse the utter nonsense that is coming from politicians like Kelly Leitch as she vies for the head of the Conservative party? Her rhetoric is the same insidious language that is taking down a once great nation.”

DUNCAN MCCUE: Rick Quist also wrote in about a few Canadian politicians he thinks we missed. He writes: “Your list of Trump, Rob Ford and Ralph Klein missed the following: 1. Trudeau Sr. 2. Trudeau Jr. 3. Rachel Notley. Is your bias showing again?”

PC: And—

DUNCAN MCCUE: And—that's mine.

PC: That’s yours. Go.

DUNCAN MCCUE: And @PeebsY0 tweets: “Your panel hasn't mentioned that half the electorate didn't vote. That's how Trump won. Not populism, rejection or movement.”

PC: We could have read it together you know. That would have been fun. Alright, let’s move on to another aspect of this month's US presidential election campaign.

SOUNDCLIP

I think the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea. You know voters make decisions based on their lived experience. We know—we study this. We know that it's a very small volume of anything. You know hoaxes aren't new on Facebook, right? I mean there have been hoaxes on the Internet and there were hoaxes before. And we do our best to make it so that we can show people the most meaningful content that we can.

PC: That's Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking at a conference last week addressing the question: How much did social media influence the outcome of the US presidential election? Mr. Zuckerberg has been criticized for that response, both within his company and from outside of it. But according to our next guest, social media and digital technology don't only affect the news we see but also the way we behave offline in real life. Sherry Turkle is a professor at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and she is also the author of most recently, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Sherry Turkle is on the line from Boston. Hello.

SHERRY TURKLE: Hi.

PC: So first off, what did you make of Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that Facebook did not influence the election, the American election of last week?

SHERRY TURKLE: Mark Zuckerberg is in denial. He knows he's in a tough spot. He's in a tough spot because he wants to feel that he has a technology company that doesn't have to take responsibility for being a news organization. But in fact, 44 per cent of Americans get their news from Facebook. And in fact, he runs a media company, he runs a news organization where there are different responsibilities and rights that go along with the job. And he, you know and I say he's in denial. I mean he's trying to come to terms as is, as is Google, as is Twitter, with what it means to be in this new kind of business. And I'm sympathetic because he didn't set out to be a news organization but it's really high time that Facebook you know really meets its responsibilities as a news organization.

PC: So let's talk about how it's influenced people both online and offline. If we look at the campaign, how did online culture affect the tone of the American campaign, do you think?

SHERRY TURKLE: Well, one thing about Facebook is that it shows you what you—what it thinks you want to know based on what you've wanted to see before. So that's its job because it wants you to be happy. It wants you to click. It wants you to buy stuff because you're happy clicking and seeing things. So it means that you will finally borrow yourself into a silo where you will only see things that essentially you agree with. And now in most recent studies, college students will not talk to people whose political points of view they disagree with, even if they share a bathroom. So in a way, it's not just that we do this on Facebook but we've taken our online habits where we get used to not having conversations with anyone we disagree with and we've brought those habits offline, where we avoid confrontation and conversations with anyone we disagree with even in our offline world.

PC: And how has all of that connect—how is it all connected to the negative tone that we saw during the campaign, do you think?

SHERRY TURKLE: Well, it's really interesting. I was asked by the Commission on Presidential Debates to consult on making the tone of the debates more civil in terms of the fears that the online debate would be very rough. And I think it turned out that in the event, what we saw in this election is that we have taken the coarse way we speak to each other online and we have now made that part of our standard political discourse.

PC: What about for you in your own experience? I mean you're on Facebook and stuff. Did you notice a change about how you were treated online during the campaign?

SHERRY TURKLE: Yes. People now feel free to be quite coarse, anti-Semitic, violent in their disapproval.

PC: You’ve experienced that online.

SHERRY TURKLE: Yes, absolutely.

[Crosstalk]

PC: People made anti-Semitic attacks.

SHERRY TURKLE: Absolutely. And I and many, many other people—I mean this is a—there's been a kind of sense of permission to move away from civil discourse as though that weren't important. You see it in Washington but you see it in third grade and fifth grade and college—unwillingness to have a political conversation with people you disagree with and to try to find common cause and instead to fight with each other and to hurl expletives at each other. And I think that the Internet is not the—obviously is not the entire story but it's part of the story and it's time to change the way we bring the Internet into the rest of our lives.

PC: So you know Sherry, there's someone saying give me a break, Sherry Turkle. Are you really saying what we do online, that those discussions—that coarsening that you talk about—has real life implications, I mean in our offline lives?

SHERRY TURKLE: Yes. That's what I'm saying. You develop habits of mind. You develop a habit of mind where you respond to—where it just becomes natural to you to—in a comments section—use any kind of profanity to express any kind of vulgar thought or vicious thought about the president of the United States, or to see those thoughts expressed, as though you have that right to express yourself in that way wherever you are anonymously, that's just okay.

PC: And someone would say that's a great thing about the Internet though, Sherry. That's about free speech.

SHERRY TURKLE: Well, there should be places, yes. There should be places that is about free speech. But the point I'm making is that when you get together to discuss Mad Men and three comments down into you know why Betty Draper gained weight in episode 17, where into Barack Obama and his birth certificate, we've sort of lost our discipline for a serious conversation both about Mad Men and about Barack Obama and about free speech. And I think also the habits of anonymity online I think have gotten us into a very bad place.

PC: Here's the conundrum: you know we're living more and more of our lives online. As you said, 44 per cent of Americans consume news, their news from Facebook. Are we stuck, do you think, with this increasingly angry political dialogue or what do we need to do to turn this around?

SHERRY TURKLE: I don't think we're stuck with this at all because I think that—in my research shows that people really are tired of it and people just feeling like I want this to be over. People should come out of a campaign feeling you know feeling excited, excited for their person, excited that they might win. Sorry if the other person doesn't win, but a feeling of, I just want this to be over. I can't stand to be discussing this anymore. A fatigue with conversation is because people really aren't having a political conversation. They're just, they’re in a nightmare of a comment section on a bad day on the Internet.

PC: Let me ask you this: what is my role? I have to tell you, you know I was on Facebook last evening and I said to myself I've just got to shut this down because I can't parse the reality from the fake news maybe and I'm scared to even be on here. Maybe if I just don't deal with it, right? So my question is what does the ordinary person do if the responsibility lies on these companies, these media companies? What am I supposed to do as a consumer?

SHERRY TURKLE: Well, the first thing you can do as a consumer is to realize you are a consumer which I don't think people see themselves that way. And as a consumer, you are a very powerful voice in telling Facebook what you require of them. I mean if consumers really told Facebook we don't want fake news, if that had been a serious consumer demand to Facebook three years ago, I think this problem might not have the dimensions it has today.

PC: Sherry Turkle, thank you for your insights. I appreciate it very much.

SHERRY TURKLE: My pleasure.

PC: Sherry Turkle is a professor at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's also the author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Sherry Turkle is in Boston.

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Why 'post-truth' wins Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year

Guests: Katherine Connor Martin

DUNCAN MCCUE: Okay. Let's move on to another story. Earlier this week we heard how the RCMP is lobbying the prime minister's office for new powers to bypass online digital roadblocks. It needs the help in cases where national security threats and other high priority suspects hide online and operate anonymously.

SOUNDCLIP

I think I can safely say that there is criminal activity going on every day that's facilitated by technology that we aren't acting on. We're losing our ability, if we haven't lost it entirely, to bring the traditional, investigative response to technologically facilitated crime. It's getting to the point where you know if you've got a complaint of criminality on the Internet, you're going to have to think about where you go with that complaint because I don't know that we can help you.

PC: That's RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson speaking with CBC News.

DUNCAN MCCUE: And after that interview, we heard from a lot of listeners. Many of you had concerns. On Twitter, Nelson writes: “This is an example of police using fear to try and gain public support. In a time where Canadian police are spying on journalists, these proposals are scary.”

PC: Maria Mandjik from Brampton, Ontario tweets: “I don't trust the RCMP. No way they should get these powers.”

DUNCAN MCCUE: Irene Wilkinson in Halifax disagrees. She writes: “I do support Bill C-51 and anything that gives police officers what they need in order to keep Canada safe. I am so tired of hearing Canadians cry "Privacy" when most of them hang out their dirty laundry on a variety of social media. In Canada right now it seems that privacy trumps security.”

PC: Connor Jarratt posted this: “What threat? In terms of privacy, the odds are stacked against citizens as it is. Do some real police work instead of having the Internet Service Providers and device manufacturers do it for you.”

DUNCAN MCCUE: George Dyson from Hall's Harbour, Nova Scotia, has a different take, writing: “I really don't have a problem with police having wider powers, as long as the powers are used in a targeted fashion, with approval of a judicial body and with real-time oversight. That would include long-term data storage, divulging passwords and encryption keys. I also have no problem with police accessing basic personal data such as name, age, address, phone number, IP address and email addresses, as this is really no different than a modern version of a phone book.

PC: Alright. Let's get to our next story. It's mid-November, the time of year again when the Oxford Dictionary announces its selection of the word of the year and the runners-up that didn't quite make it. So to tell us the 2016's winner, we’re joined by Katherine Connor Martin, the head of US dictionaries at Oxford University Press. She’s in New York. Hello.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Hi.

PC: So what’s the word of the year?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Our word of the year for 2016 is post-truth.

PC: Post-truth.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Yes.

PC: Hyphenated? P-O-S-T-hyphened-truth.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: That's right.

PC: Okay. What does it mean? Give me the definition?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: It's an adjective which we define as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

PC: Okay. It's like grade school. Now use it in a sentence please.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, pundits commented that we may have entered a post-truth era.

PC: Oh, very good. Top marks to you. Okay. When did this term, post-truth, when was it originally coined?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Well, it was first used actually quite some time ago in 1992. The first evidence we found in this meaning is in an article in The Nation magazine that was written in response to the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War. And the author who is a Serbian playwright, Steve Tesich, said, “It's as if we as a free people have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world.” And there's a little bit of evidence of it being used through the decades since then but we noticed that it started to really become much more common this year. And it was becoming common around—initially, we saw it in the Brexit referendum in the UK. So we saw that it was popping up in conversations around that debate and then we also saw it begin to pop up in discussions around the presidential campaign in the United States. So we were really struck that this was a transatlantic phenomenon. And I think now we're in the discussion, as with your previous guest about Facebook and filter bubbles, it's really been kind of a universal theme this year in our public discourse.

PC: It’s zeitgeisty.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Yes. It very much is.

PC: Let me ask you this, Katherine: It reminds me—post-truth reminds me of truthiness. You know Stephen Colbert, truthiness—I think it was about a decade ago that that was sort of the it word.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Yeah. 2005. 2005.

PC: Okay. So what's the difference between post-truth and truthiness?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Well, truthiness is of course a noun and so it's used to describe a quality of a particular isolated statement. And what we're seeing—and it's also humourous—post-truth is used more seriously and it's an adjective and it's the words that’s usually used to modify our politics era and world. So those are really big meaty things. We're not talking any more about a particular article or statement being characterized by truthiness. We're talking—we're describing our entire world as belonging to a time in which truth is less important than it used to be.

PC: This is a big word. It's hefty.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: It is.

PC: Okay. How did you choose the word? How does Oxford go about—every year there's many words that are in vogue, if I can put it that way. How does it pick the winner?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Well, as you say, our job is to add new words to the dictionary. So we're always monitoring throughout the year words that we see trending upwards in usage and we come up with a big list. I think this year it was around 200 or so words and then we look at the evidence for them and discuss sort of the objective evidence and then we also discuss subjectively how well we think they kind of embody the zeitgeist. And we trim that original list down to a list of 10 and one of those gets the nod as the word of the year. There are many others as well.

PC: Okay. So I don't know if you know the other nine that sort of made the runners-up list, but what are the couple others that were in contention?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Well, another big one was Brexiteer.

PC: Mhm.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: So that's a person who's in favor of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union. Obviously since we're an international company and based in Oxford, that was a huge word for them this year. And that was really interesting, the whole Brexit referendum, because you had a political decision that spawned a new word in a really interesting way of Brexit. On a more lighthearted note, we have the word adulating, which is “the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.” So we see that young adults who are entering the real world may be getting their own apartment for the first time, are referring to things like paying their bills and getting the oil changed on their car as adulting.

PC: Yeah. I think this synonym is boring. In any case, let me ask you about a political word that has been on the lips of many people these past months. That is alt-right, short form for alternative right. Was that in your runners-up list?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: That was on the list as well. Yeah.

PC: Okay. So here's my question about alt-right then—and I am glad it was on your list in this sense—how do you at Oxford come up with a definition because this is a you know sort of undefined philosophy. So how do you define something that is not quite definable I guess in some ways?

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: Well, we defined it in an undefined way really because what we noticed—what we do is to look at as much evidence as we can find for the word. So we looked at hundreds of instances of people using the term alt-right in the media and what we found was that they were defining it more by its tactics than by its ideology. And so we defined it as “an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.” So what we focused on, on the looseness of the grouping and the fact that it's sort of, it’s describing the way that they're behaving online. Now there's been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the difference between alt-right and white supremacy with people saying well, aren't they the same thing? Well, it's true that the word alt-right was coined by unapologetic white nationalists, but that's not the way that it's usually used. It's usually used to refer to a much broader range of ideological viewpoints that are characterized by online communication, that are promoted by online communication but are generally of a reactionary nature. But this has certainly been a word that has increased in usage a great deal this year and it's very challenging. This is the hardest work we do when we're working on the dictionary, is to work on a term like this.

PC: Words matter. Definitions matter. Katherine, thank you.

KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN: My pleasure.

PC: Katherine Connor Martin, the head of US dictionaries at Oxford University Press. She was in New York City.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Okay. Let's move on to some more of your comments from a story we've been following. Monday on the show, we heard from author Tim Wu, who says the most valuable commodity in the world today is our attention and that we'd better be careful how we spend it, especially when it comes to such sites as Facebook.

SOUNDCLIP

We have created an ad platform out of our social lives. It’s strange. I think people from another generation would say your friends sell you things or you let your friends be an advertising medium? But it is what has happened. The social sphere has been colonialized by advertising.

DUNCAN MCCUE: That was Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants.

PC: Well, many of you gave your attention to that segment. Lee Smith from Woodbridge, Ontario writes: “When the internet started to become so commercialized, we were essentially told it was "our fault," that we customers were resisting paying for content and thus were inundated with advertising since the internet must be paid for somehow. It was somewhat recently that I realized that in fact, this delivery mode has made the providers stinking rich—far richer than they could ever become with subscription charges. Now, I willingly pay subscription charges for internet service that is useful or interesting to me and which is not also loaded with ads that seek my attention.”

DUNCAN MCCUE: Ken Burkholder from Port McNeill, BC, writes: “I became most concerned when I would go online and find ads from Amazon for an item I had been looking a few days previously. I did some searching and found a program that I could use to block advertisers from seeing what I was looking at. I have been using it with great success. People have the power to control what they see and it is time they started to exercise it rather than crying about it.

PC: And finally on this one, Mike Newman in Ottawa wrote to us with his strategy to protect his attention. He emails: “I was born in 1969. When I was a kid we'd rush home to watch Get Smart, Batman (with Adam West) and Three's Company. Around age 14, I noticed that I was spending a lot of time doing something I didn't fundamentally care about and asked myself why I was watching so many hours of TV. I couldn't come up with an answer so I stopped watching it until I could come up with an answer. I never did come up with a satisfying reason and I’ve never owned a TV. Simple.”

[Music]

PC: Simple.

DUNCAN MCCUE: And now it's time to give credit where credit is due. The week that was on The Current was produced by: Idella Sturino, Shannon Higgins, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese and Lara O'Brien.

PC: Julian Uzielli, Josh Bloch, Pacinthe Mattar, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Kristin Nelson, John Chipman and Willow Smith. Special thanks this week to our Winnipeg network producer, Suzanne Dufresne.

DUNCAN MCCUE: The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our senior documentary editor is Joan Webber.

PC: Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar. Duncan, it’s simple. Just don’t watch TV if you can’t find—

DUNCAN MCCUE: Don’t watch TV.

PC: The point he’s making is don’t go on the Internet if you can’t find a reason to do it.

DUNCAN MCCUE: It’s a very good point.

PC: Take that to the bank. Okay. What’s in store on The Current for you for tomorrow?

DUNCAN MCCUE: Tomorrow we have the renowned philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. He argues that race and nationalism are social constructs. And so he says that's a big part, a big part of Trump and Brexit. So we're going to be talking—I'm really looking forward to talking with him. And also the curious case of a BC parent who's taking the Port Alberni school district to court. She says having her child participate in an Indigenous smudging ceremony violates religious freedoms.

PC: Huh. Controversial stuff tomorrow on the program.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Mhm.

PC: Look forward to hearing it all. Thank you, Duncan. Duncan McCue is the host of CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup, which of course you can listen to on Sundays. And he's this week's Current’s Friday host. Well, that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One, q's heading your way and Tom Power will be speaking with actress Anna Kendrick about her new book, Scrappy Little Nobody. Don't forget: you can always listen to The Current, q, Out in the Open—which is my show—on Saturdays at three, people, or any of your favorite CBC Radio shows with the CBC Radio app. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally, we were speaking earlier today about countries deciding to go it alone. And so we're going to leave you with some classic comedy from Monty Python asking what have the Romans ever done for us? I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you so very much for lending us your ear here on The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: They bled us white. They’ve taken everything we had and not just from us—from our fathers and from our father’s fathers. And what have they ever given us in return?

VOICE 2: The aqueduct?

VOICE 1: What?

VOICE 2: The aqueduct?

VOICE 1: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. That’s true, yeah.

VOICE 2: And the sanitation.

VOICE 3: Oh yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

VOICE 1: Yeah, alright. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

VOICE 4: And the roads.

VOICE 1: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads—

VOICE 5: Irrigation.

VOICE 2: Medicine.

VOICE 6: Education.

VOICE 1: Yeah, yeah. Alright. Fair enough.

VOICE 7: And the wine.

MANY VOICES: Oh, yes. Yeah…

VOICE 8: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left.

VOICE 5: Public baths.

VOICE 3: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

VOICE 8: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it—they're the ones who could in a place like this.

[Everyone laughs]

VOICE 1: Alright. But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

VOICE 2: Brought peace.

VOICE 1: Oh, peace? Shut up.

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November 17, 2016 full episode transcript

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