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The Current Transcript for January 16, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You like sugar, huh?

VOICE 2: Is there sugar in syrup?

VOICE 1: Yes…

VOICE 2: Then yes. We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The elves in the movies aren't the only ones with sugar on their shelves. Take a look around—added sugars are in the majority of packaged foods in our grocery stores. And sugar is a ubiquitous part of our lives. From our celebrations—birthday cakes, treats, desserts—to our terms of endearment—honey, sweetie. But science writer Gary Taubes is set to disrupt all that sugar reattachment. He argues sugar is responsible for more premature deaths than cigarettes. His case against sugar in just a moment. Also today—

SOUNDCLIP

It's unimaginable anywhere. Obviously for us in Saskatchewan, it’s very much hard to believe and surreal right here in our province.

AMT: Premier Brad Wall spoke for many when he expressed sorrow and disbelief the day a teenage shooter killed four people in La Loche, Saskatchewan one year ago. The money, the concern, the pledges to help came pouring in. But one year later, people in the small Northern communities say they feel abandoned and some of those working to help feel stretched to the limit. What happened? We're asking in half an hour. And you've heard this concern on US campuses before.

SOUNDCLIP

As a black female here aspiring to receive an education, sometimes it's hard, just because of the stereotypes and the way I’m looked at.

AMT: But black students in Canada say they feel as marginalized—lumped into a category of non-whites called “visible minority”, missing out on mentors and facing low expectations from teachers. We've got that discussion in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Is sugar killing us? Author Gary Taubes makes his case

Guests: Gary Taubes

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

AMT: Well, if your New Year's resolution was to cut down on sugar, then you know just how hard it is to avoid the stuff. A newly published study by Ontario researchers just last week shows just how thoroughly sweetened our food has become. It looked at more than 40,000 products on Canadian supermarket shelves and it found that more than two-thirds of them contain added sugar, including baby foods and products marked as healthy choices. It may go by different names on the label—glucose and fructose, fruit juice concentrate—but no matter what the manufacturer calls it, Gary Taubes says we should be avoiding it. He is an investigative journalist who specializes in science and science research issues. He calls sugar the new tobacco. It is backed by powerful lobbies. It is everywhere in our lives and he says it is killing us. As part of our project, The Disruptors, Gary Taubes says we need to dramatically change our relationship to sugar. His new book is called The Case Against Sugar and he joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

GARY TAUBES: Hi.

AMT: Stop eating sugar. It's a tall order.

GARY TAUBES: Yeah, it is. And the argument I'm making is, I'm trying to give people the rationale why into sort of reset how we think of this kind of vitally, major element of our diet.

AMT: And so why sugar and not other junk foods?

GARY TAUBES: Well, because the idea is that beginning in the late 19th century, we've had these tremendous epidemics of obesity and diabetes. You could actually start seeing them begin in the second half, in the 1860s, 1870s, and we want to know what the cause. That's what I wanted to know when I did this book. You could see it everywhere. First Nations people in Canada who 50 years ago had vanishingly small rates of diabetes and now one in every two adults in some populations are diabetic. So you want to pinpoint it. And the easiest thing to do is say it’s junk food and then you have to define it’s junk food. But the scientific perspective that you would take is to—if you have an epidemic you want to identify the cause. And in this case, the prime suspect happens to be sugar. It could be trans fats, it could be you know you could name your chemicals in the ground water. But the prime suspect happens to be sugar and it was always sugar. So what I try to do is explain in this book why a book like mine in 2017 is even necessary.

AMT: Let's just clarify what you mean by sugar. All sugars naturally occurring?

GARY TAUBES: By sugar, I mean—and this is one of the reasons we got here is because major influential figures in this debate going back 60, 70, 80 years didn't know what they meant when they said sugar. So sugar, sucrose—the white stuff we put on our coffee or sprinkle on our cereal or that's coated on our cereal—is half a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose and the fructose is what makes it sweet and the fructose is what differentiates it from other starches, from white flour. High fructose corn syrup is 55 per cent fructose and 45 per cent glucose. So these roughly 50-50 mixtures are high fructose. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration calls them caloric sweeteners. And we often refer to them as added sugars or refined sugars. But one of the arguments is a dose makes the poison. That's true of everything and the same sugars—fructose, glucose, sucrose—can be found in fruits and they can be found in vegetables but in much smaller doses.

AMT: And also honey, fruit juice concentrate.

GARY TAUBES: Honey too is a—

[Crosstalk]

AMT: So when we see that, that's added sugar.

GARY TAUBES: Well yeah and it's not refined sugar. And one of the interesting things about sugar itself is it was so useful. Honey’s use has always been limited for whatever reason. It's got a distinct taste. Most people won't put it in coffee. You can’t put it in cold beverages because of its viscous, you know, form. So for whatever reason, the per capita consumption of honey has always stayed very low historically. It hasn't changed much in a hundred years in the US. Whereas sugar consumption, 200 years ago we were consuming maybe five pounds per capita. That's the equivalent of the sugar in a can Coca-Cola every six days, a 12-ounce can. And by 1999, the food industry was making 155 pounds of sugar value—about 30-fold increase.

AMT: And that's what we consume. What do we consume today?

GARY TAUBES: Well again, the number, it's very hard to tell what we consume. What we can tell you is what the food industry—with accuracy—is what the food industry makes available and it peaked in 1999. It's down to, I think, around 130 pounds per capita in the US.

AMT: A hundred and thirty pounds of sugar per capita.

GARY TAUBES: Yeah.

AMT: That’s a lot of sugar.

GARY TAUBES: That’s a lot of sugar.

AMT: Okay. So how can you isolate sugar is the primary cause behind the increase in diabetes?

GARY TAUBES: Well again, one way to do it is just to look at different populations. So the general observation is that you have—you know populations when they go through what's called a nutrition transition, when they go from eating whatever their traditional diet was and that could be you know a First Nations diet of caribou or an Inuit diet or a Maasai diet in Africa where it's meat, milk or an agrarian diet or a Southeast Asian diet, where it's high carb and they begin trading with the West and they get westernized and then you get these manifestations of obesity and diabetes. And one way I do in the book is you can go around from nation to nation—because I can't really blame it on meat because the Native Americans in the First Nations people ate a lot of meat and they had no diabetes. You could kind of go through that, that game ruling plays out and what you’re left with is whenever this crime is committed—and I often think of it in my head in legal terms and it's a very distinctive crime, these obesity and diabetes—sugar is always at the scene of the crime.

AMT: There are many public health officials and advocates, health advocates, who say it's a matter of calories in, calories out and the causes of obesity or diabetes is overeating. It's our sedentary lives. Are they all wrong?

GARY TAUBES: Yeah. I would say yes. And you know this is—I talk about this in the book—and I talk about the history of this idea and it's in all my books and I think it's almost incomprehensibly naive. It dates to the science of 1900, back when the only thing people can measure about foods, nutritionists could measure was their vitamin and mineral content and the energy they contain.

AMT: So that’s the calories in, calories out is naïve. So you're saying it's more complex. Does it have to do with insulin? What does it have to do with?

GARY TAUBES: I’m saying it's a biological issue not a physics issue. It's not an accounting issue. Just like everything else in your body, the amount of fat on your body is exceedingly well-regulated. We evolved. We didn't just evolve to be able to spill excess calories into our fat tissue. And in the 1960s, researchers discovered you know they had a new tool available—which a woman named Rosalyn Yalow won the Nobel Prize for—something they could measure hormones in the bloodstream. And you could see not just how hormones regulate fat accumulation, but you could see how foods affect hormonal status. So when you eat carbohydrates and you eat sugar, that raises this hormone insulin which works to make you store calories as fat. That's one of the many things it does. And sugar in particular, that fructose molecule I mentioned, happens to metabolize in the liver and there's a lot of evidence. Again, it's a scene of the crime thing. There's a lot of evidence saying that a condition called insulin resistance begins in the liver and insulin resistance is the fundamental defect in the common form of diabetes known as type 2.

AMT: You know not everyone agrees with you. I'd like you to listen to a clip of Yoni Freedhoff. He is a Canadian weight loss expert, a family doctor and assistant professor of medicine at University of Ottawa. This is what he had to say about your argument about sugar.

SOUNDCLIP

There are lots of reasons why we struggle with our high rates of non-communicable diseases that are diet-related. And I think broadly speaking, the reason that we are doing so is we are eating way more and more specifically. We're eating more in the way of ultra-processed foods and the way we socialize with food at every single turn is different as well. Pointing it to just sugar within the picture that I just described, I think is oversimplifying things and not helpful ultimately. Telling people not to have sugar, well, that's not going to necessarily happen. And until we change the way our food culture works, I think that focusing on a single nutrient will just lead us to an era of low sugar ultra-processed foods which likely won't get us very far.

AMT: Gary Taubes, how do you respond to that?

GARY TAUBES: I could agree with Yoni, but then we'd both be wrong. You know again, one of the things I do in my book is I [unintelligible] populations. I mean they’re in the literature. If you go looking, you could find populations going back difference into Native American tribe, the Sioux, on a reservation 1928 with explosive levels of obesity and none of this sort of ultra-processed, packaged food that Yoni—whom I like and respect—is talking about. And we want to explain obesity and diabetes in those populations too. Another famous example of a Native American tribe that has been studied by the NIH for 60 years and had diabetes explode among them in the 1960s was the Pima.

AMT: And that's right when they have processed sugar, processed foods with sugar introduced.

GARY TAUBES: Right after World War II, during World War II, they get acculturated because of the war. The men get drafted into the army. The women go to work in munitions factories. And so I think Yoni would say if we always ate the way we did in the 1960s, we'd be fine.

AMT: Right. But they went to work in munitions factories. But talk to me about the food. So they were eating processed food with sugar in it.

GARY TAUBES: Yeah.

AMT: Okay.

GARY TAUBES: As they do, they get acculturated and you know the Coca-Colas. So indeed there's junk food, but it's the way we would have wanted Americans or Canadians to eat today. So again, Yoni and I have different viewpoints about how you do science. But what I'm doing is saying you can find—but you can isolate the nutrient and might not be one nutrient, maybe it's sugar and something else, but it certainly seems to be that sugar would be your prime suspect in the argument I'm making. So Yoni wants to—he sees patients, he wants to help them become leaner and healthier. I want to identify the cause of the epidemics. These epidemics are tragic and to have the kind of attitude where it's sort of you know we can’t tell—would you ever tell people not to smoke cigarettes?

AMT: Okay. But you're not just saying you want to identify it. You are actually arguing that the industry has masked it. You are saying that nutritionists have been complicit with the industry in masking the role of sugar.

GARY TAUBES: Right.

AMT: So let me ask you. You write the sugar industry suppressed research into links between sugar and diabetes and obesity. What did they do?

GARY TAUBES: They didn't suppress—actually, I don't think I wrote that. They didn't suppress. What they did is back, beginning in the 1960s and seventies when doctors were saying look, they don't want to get fat, don't put sugar in your coffee. Use, you know, saccharin instead. And then a few very influential nutritionists started arguing that sugar was the most likely cause of heart disease and diabetes. The sugar industry played simply paid the very equally influential nutritionists to believe that fat was the cause, to write papers arguing that fat was the cause. And so in 1976, ’77 when the food and drug administration had to make a decision about whether sugar was generally recognized as safe, they had these documents that had been prepared by, led by this very famous Harvard nutritionist that the sugar industry had paid for, saying it's not sugar, it's fat. So what I've been saying—the reason I say nutritionists are to blame—is because they gave the sugar industry the arguments they needed to defend themselves. This idea that a calorie is a calorie and obesity is an energy balance disorder means purely that all calories are equal. It doesn't matter. There's no such thing as a fattening food. So when people like me come along and say there is a fattening food. There's a pathogenic food and it's sugar because of the influence it has on these hormones and physiological states. The response is what the nutritionists have said all these years which is hey, a calorie is a calorie. Don't blame sugar. If you're getting fatter, cut back on broccoli and exercise more.

AMT: You know it's interesting. I was reading—you wrote a piece in the New York Times on the weekend and I was looking at the people who responded. There was this glee at saying oh, look at this. Somebody who—one person says the science is all wrong, how come we're going to believe you and not climate change? You're not saying the science is wrong. You're saying the science was never looked at properly.

GARY TAUBES: Well yeah. I mean I got into this. I'm a huge fan. I'm a science geek. That's what I do. I love science. I was mentored by some of the great scientists in the world in the 1980s when I was doing my first investigations. The problem is in some fields, the research community doesn't really understand how to do science. And in fields where you’re looking at chronic diseases—public health and medicine, where there's a lot of pressure to get an answer fast—people tend to jump to conclusions. And then once they jump to conclusions, instead of trying to rigorously test those conclusions, they try to defend the conclusions. And we've been doing that for 50 years and my book is saying it's time to stop doing it. We've got this crisis on our hands. So I'm going to tell people this was the prime suspect all along and I would wish you would start you know testing your assumptions instead of insisting they're true.

AMT: You say that it has killed more people prematurely than cigarettes.

GARY TAUBES: It’s actually an easy argument to make. And the reason is pretty simple. The great technological innovation in the late 19th century was something called flue-curing tobacco and what flue-curing tobacco does is it increases the sugar content of the tobacco leaves from about two per cent to 20 per cent. So when the first American blended cigarette came in in 1913, Camel cigarettes, it was blended primarily between two tobaccos: one that was flue-cured so that it had this high sugar content, and the other was a chewing tobacco that had been marinated in what's called a sugar sauce. And it had high sugar content and a high nicotine content. And now you had tobacco that could be drawn easily into the lungs without spurring a cough reflex and that could bring the nicotine and the carcinogens deep into the lungs and the same thing is true of American tobaccos. So the lung cancer epidemic that followed the explosive success of American blended cigarettes was in part largely due to the sugar content of the leaves of the tobacco. So that's not a sugar industry issue. That's a tobacco issue. But the point is we wouldn't have nearly the deaths from lung cancer and heart disease that tobacco has caused if it wasn't for sugar.

AMT: In a perfect world, what should we eat then?

GARY TAUBES: Everybody's different. One of the arguments I've been making is that we tend to give public health guidelines for everyone. So you know the Ethiopian marathoner who has emigrated, come to the US and Canada and runs 30 miles a day and weighs 110 pounds naturally, gets the same diet advice as somebody who's you know been predisposed to become morbidly obese and diabetic. And I believe and my work has led me to believe over the years that for people predisposed to gain weight, for the obese and diabetic, if they want to become as healthy as possible, they have to cut back not just sugar, but sugar and refined grains and maybe all carbohydrates and replace it with fat. And that's the kind of diet that’s in effect the Atkins diet and for 60 years, the medical community has been saying that's quackery. And the reason I came to fame or infamy in the United States is I did a series of investigations for the journal Science and then cover stories for the Times Magazine, starting without any bias, concluding that in fact if you look at the biology instead of these other sort of naive assumptions, this should be the way we should be thinking about it.

AMT: So again, even the sugars and carbs like bread, like certain vegetables are also culprits.

GARY TAUBES: Until the 1960s when we got this idea that was never confirmed, that dietary fat caused heart disease, the conventional wisdom was carbs made you fat.

AMT: Right. And that has been debunked now that you know dietary, the fat.

GARY TAUBES: It’s slowly crumbling. Let's put it that way. If you look at what people say in defense of that hypothesis today compared to 30 years ago, they're clearly like slowly giving up the ground and leaving that battle behind.

AMT: But you know that's the problem isn't it? So you know people were told by authorities stay away from these fats. And now you're arguing stay away from the sugars. What’s a thinking person with a really busy life supposed to do?

GARY TAUBES: It's confusing. And when Yoni Freedhoff says we've seen the single nutrient idea fail, he's saying because of Taubes’ work, refuting the idea that salt causes high blood pressure and dietary fat causes heart disease. The problem is if you think of it again as a crime—and so the crime is obesity and diabetes—this was not the common human condition. First we wanted to blame fat. The problem is something is committing that crime. There is something out there in our environment that's driving us to be obese and diabetic and it's not just that we're lazy and we eat too much and we can’t say no. That's naive and it's unjustified and it insults obese and diabetic people everywhere. So the question is what is it in the environment? I wish it was simple. I wish people didn't have to listen to a nutritionist. I mean a journalist. Excuse me. That was a Freudian slip. I do wish that there was a simple way to do it and when I write my books, one of the things I say in the beginning of the books is read my books. Think about what I'm saying. Think critically about it. And the difference is you can experiment. So that's the thing. It’s easy. Change your diet. See if it helps. If it doesn't, try something else.

AMT: Gary Taubes, thanks for coming in.

GARY TAUBES: Thank you.

AMT: Gary Taubes is the author of The Case Against Sugar. He's with me here in our Toronto studio. If you tried to cut sugar in your own diet, let us know how it's been for you. Tweet us. We are @thecurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook to comment. E-mail us through the website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you're joining us partway through, you can download the podcast. You can find us on the CBC Radio app. You can go to Google Play or the App Store and let us know what you're thinking. Stay with us. The news is next and then we're back. This is The Current.

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La Loche, Sask., services still lacking 1 year after shooting, say residents

Guests: Greg Hatch, Dr. Sara Dungavell

Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Still to come, being black in the ivory tower. PhD student Huda Hassan is offering on Twitter to help aspiring women of colour with their grad school applications. She joins me in half an hour to kick off a conversation about the need for greater diversity in higher education. But first, one year on. We're following up on the promise of help to a community in need of healing.

SOUNDCLIP

I don't know what words there are, if they exist even, to possibly describe how you feel, how devastated the community is and how the province feels. Our youngest is in Grade 12. I cannot even fathom getting a call like the calls that went out on Friday. And so we have to remember that beyond this day and the next day, beyond the short term, La Loche is going to need your neighbours and friends across the province. You’re going to need the supports and you will have them. Whether that’s counselling, the need for safety and also the discussions we're going to have for the long term issues. Our prayers are with you. We wish you all the best and you will not be walking through this alone.

AMT: The premier of Saskatchewan Brad Wall speaking in La Loche last year and assuring people in the community they would get the help they need. It was just about a year ago on January 22^nd, 2016 that the remote northern community was rocked by shootings that left four people dead: teen brothers Drayden and Dayne Fontaine, teacher's assistant Marie Janvier, and teacher Adam Wood. Another seven people were injured. And a male teen from the community was arrested and has pleaded guilty to the deaths. That plea happened in October. The sentencing won't happen till the spring. When the national spotlight shone on La Loche last year, it exposed a community in dire straits and in need of special services. The youth of La Loche needed counselling to deal with this most recent trauma and to help with the community's ongoing suicide crisis. Last week, community leaders spoke out about local services that remain inconsistent and the distance many community leaders or members must travel for care: a six hours’ drive to Saskatoon. Saskatchewan’s minister responsible for First Nations, Metis and Northern Affairs Donna Harpauer responded last week.

SOUNDCLIP

There's no doubt. You know it is challenging to have services in every community because it's not a matter of putting a service in the north. It's not a matter of putting a service in a region because even regionally, there is such a great distance. So to have those offices and those services in each and every remote community is challenging. In an ideal world, yes, but realistically, I'm not sure if that's possible.

AMT: Greg Hatch is the acting principal of Dene High School in La Loche where the shooting took place. He joins us from Fort McMurray, Alberta today. Hello.

GREG HATCH: Good morning.

AMT: Before we talk about the government response to La Loche, the shootings happened almost a year ago. I guess it'll be a year ago this coming Sunday. You were in that school. When you think back to that day, what comes to mind?

GREG HATCH: Well, I think just… I just… you know it’s a community tragedy. It’s a community tragedy and because of the school shooting that happened in Dene High School in La Loche, that’s what I think back of what it is and it was on January 22nd.

AMT: What do you remember from that day? You heard the shots, didn't you?

GREG HATCH: Yeah. I was in the back of the school and I knew there was a school shooting but I didn't have any idea what was going on with anywhere else in the building because we were in a lockdown. It was not till many, many hours later that we found out what was going on.

AMT: How has life changed for you after that day?

GREG HATCH: Well, I think life has changed. I guess you know just commenting kind of where I am at today and is, I guess, I guess making a commitment to myself that I want to move on and move on in my life. And you know in order to do that, you have to decide whether you know when you're going to enter into that process or journey into healing. So that's where I'm at right now and that's what I'm doing.

AMT: What impact has the shooting had on individual students at your school?

GREG HATCH: You know I get asked that question many, many times and all I can say is that everybody's at a different place. I don't know where everybody's at. Only they know that. All I can do is read the comments on myself of where I imagine in that—

AMT: Yeah but you're the principal. You’re the principal of the school. Do you see grades changing? Do you see a difference in the kids as you walk by? Like what have you seen as the acting principal of that school?

GREG HATCH: Well and once again, I would be generalizing to make that comment and I've told people before, I think it's not a really fair question because I'd be generalizing. And when you start to generalize, you're probably not going to get part of it right. So.

AMT: Fair enough. But are you telling me nobody needs help in the school?

GREG HATCH: Well, I mentioned earlier in the press conference earlier in the week that we absolutely need help in the school. You know? We just started the process last week of developing a communication strategy that will hopefully lead to a detailed holistic healing plan.

AMT: Okay. So you have a communication strategy for a holistic healing plan which suggests you need holistic healing and you did say in the news conference the community as a whole feels abandoned. So talk to me a little bit about what that really means.

GREG HATCH: Well, we had so many services came in and once again, you know I was very thankful to you know all the help that we got you know from individual people, to communities, to schools. But with regards to a plan on how to deal with what happened after the shooting, there wasn't a detailed plan of how to deal with all that. I'm very thankful to you all the help we received. We just didn't get enough.

AMT: Or you didn't get the right kind?

GREG HATCH: Or the right kind, absolutely.

AMT: So when you talk about like you talk comprehensive plan? Like what are you saying? Like what kinds of things would you need?

GREG HATCH: I guess the piece that we need is we need you know with regards to the healing plan, we need individuals that are trained in that area to work with us to lead us through that plan. A lot of our services are five or six hours away. It’s very difficult to get that on a consistent basis.

AMT: Right. And there was money that came in for example and you set up a breakfast program.

GREG HATCH: Yes, absolutely. The kindness from so many people and generosity, we put that into a breakfast club. But you know our funds are getting low on that. So we're trying to keep that going.

AMT: But it's that kind of thing you're talking about, that ad hoc stuff that helps for a while and then it might disappear or it's not enough to keep moving forward.

GREG HATCH: Well yes. We need block funding too. You know we have a number of programs that we have in our school but it takes money to continue to operate those programs and if you’re continually taking it out of your regular school budget, then it runs out pretty quick. And so you know we need that holistic healing plan but we also need block funding just to go into our existing programs and other programs we might want to offer.

AMT: You're not originally from La Loche, are you?

GREG HATCH: No. I'm born and raised in Dryden, Ontario and I moved to La Loche in 1976.

AMT: And why did you go there?

GREG HATCH: Well, I guess I was young. It was just an opportunity to get in, you know. Applied for a job and I got a call that I got a job in La Loche, Saskatchewan to teach Phys Ed, so away I went.

AMT: When you see now, how hard is it to get others to come and stay the way you stayed?

GREG HATCH: Well, I think once again, that's on an individual basis. We've had a number of teachers I've seen come and go and I guess it all depends with regards to how people enjoy the experience.

AMT: But we just heard from the minister responsible say that realistically, you know that getting help and services to every remote community is challenging. And realistically, she's not sure that's even possible.

GREG HATCH: So it's challenging. So what are we going to do about it then? You know you can say it’s challenging and just because we live you know in northern Saskatchewan, in La Loche, Saskatchewan, services are challenging. So the question I'm saying: so what are we going to do about those challenges?

AMT: What do you think they should do?

GREG HATCH: So they don't become challenges anymore?

AMT: So what would you like them to pay attention to?

GREG HATCH: Well, I think just come in and listen and just work with us. First of all, let’s get a comprehensive healing plan in place and also talk to doctors about getting block funding in place to run existing programs and try to move forward.

AMT: I know that you just came to Toronto with some students. They were brought in to see the Raptors play. How was that experience for your students?

GREG HATCH: It was an incredible experience. And once again, that started out by Marci Ien making a phone call and she wanted to talk to the principal of the school. Marci didn't know who the principal was. And you know it took a couple of calls because we weren't taking calls from the media at that time. We’d had enough of talking to the media. So finally when we did take it, Marci asked how she could help.

AMT: This is someone from CTV, just for—yeah, okay. This is a CTV anchor. Correct?

GREG HATCH: Yeah. Former, I believe. I didn’t know Marci Ien at that time. She didn't even know I was the principal at that time and then conversations went on. And I guess the pieces that we had said, she asked what we wanted and I said before we go any further on that, you would need to come to La Loche and see the school and see the community and once again, just keep it away from the media.

AMT: Okay. But I wanted to ask you about the specifics. You brought 10 kids to Toronto. Was that a good experience for them? Did you see something happen there?

GREG HATCH: Oh, it was, you know once again, we're still trying to believe that we were there and we definitely were there. We just got back here at midnight into Fort McMurray and then we have to drive across back to La Loche, which is about three hours here, later in the morning. So the students, when we arrived, were pretty tired and quiet. The students now are smiling. They feel very, very confident in themselves. We had a variety of experiences with regards to being on The Social, went and watched The Social, went to Ryerson, attended two Raptors games, went down yesterday morning to an art studio area and talked to a number of individuals that worked in there. It was just a positive, positive experience.

AMT: And what’s waiting for them when they get back home?

GREG HATCH: Well, we’re going back. We'll be back in school. We are back in school Tuesday morning and what we need to do with that experience is take what we learn there and pass it on to our friends, to our family, to our staff, to our community.

AMT: And so what will you be passing on to the staff about that trip?

GREG HATCH: I guess what I will be passing on is I guess what I learnt on that whole piece and piece there. If we want to change, it starts with yourself as an individual.

AMT: Okay.

GREG HATCH: And right at the start, I said you've got to make a commitment to yourself and you have to make that commitment to step into healing and that's what I’ll definitely be passing on.

AMT: Okay. Well, I've got somebody waiting in the wings just to talk to me a little bit about how able people are to step into healing. So Greg Hatch, thank you.

GREG HATCH: Alright. Thank you very much.

AMT: Greg Hatch, acting principal of Dene High School in La Loche. It was renamed after the shooting. We reached him in Fort McMurray, Alberta today. In the aftermath of these shootings in La Loche, Dr. Sara Dungavell was hired to fly into the community once a month to deliver psychiatric care. To tell us more about her work, she joins us from our studio in Saskatoon. Hello.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Hello.

AMT: Well, I guess, first of all, how does this work? You fly in once a month.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: So I actually in December had agreed to take over Dr. Shurshilova’s place with Northern Medical Services to provide some fly-in psychiatry care to northern Saskatchewan. And then in January when the shooting happened, I believe Dr. McKinney and I reached out to each other at about the same time saying is there anything we can do for La Loche?

AMT: Right. Okay. And we have talked to Dr. Shurshilova in the past because she was the only one providing psychiatric care in the region at the time.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: And now I'm the only one providing psychiatric care in the region, at least on a in-person basis.

AMT: So you go into La Loche how often?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Once a month as well as to two other northern communities once a month.

AMT: Okay and I'll ask you about them in a minute but I'd like to concentrate on La Loche, if I may.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Fair.

AMT: And so once a month for the day?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Yeah. For the day.

AMT: And what do you do?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Well, I will see new referrals that either the family doctors or the psychiatric nurse they've hired in La Loche have identified as needing a psychiatrist. I'll evaluate people for depression anxiety, psychosis, PTSD, and see whether or not there's services I can suggest they engage with or if they need medications prescribed. And then I'll see some follow ups to see how our treatment plan has worked. And I'll go back home.

AMT: Are there services they can use?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: So there is counselling in the community. One of the problems is that a lot of these counsellors are either family friends or related to other people in the community. So it makes it an uncomfortable experience for people to reach out to.

AMT: Because it doesn't feel private.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: No. And I think actually, there have been issues in terms of privacy in a lot of the communities where because there are small communities and a lot of people know each other, people you don't necessarily want knowing your private information find out.

AMT: And so does that mean some people don't want to come at all?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Yes. We do actually have problems with people not coming even though they've been referred to see me or with people not being willing to engage with counselling, even though that's probably what's going to help them the best.

AMT: When you come in once a month, are you able to go back and see those same people again?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: I can. And some of them will follow up with me. Some of them don't. Sometimes we organize follow ups via our Telehealth, our Telemedicine. Because La Loche is so close to the lake, frequently the plane’s fogged out so it can't actually land and I can't do my clinic that month.

AMT: Hmm. What kind of conditions are you seeing there?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: A lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. A fair bit of PTSD, but not actually—most of it's not directly related to the shooting. Most of it’s related to the experiences in life overall that are leading to PTSD. There's a lot of trauma that's happened to people living up north.

AMT: There are a lot of Indigenous people in that community as well.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Yes.

AMT: Does that kind of historical trauma plays a role as well?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Certainly. We get that intergenerational trauma getting passed down. And how much of what I'm seeing now is because people have been parented by other people who have had trauma, so that they're not learning useful coping strategies. They're not getting the emotional regulation that you'd hope someone would get in a warm, supported childhood because their parents didn't have a warm, supported childhood and their parents didn't have a warm, supported childhood. That's certainly an issue, but part of what I'm seeing is also that there is current trauma going on. A ridiculously high level of my patients in my northern clinics have lost someone in a fire, have lost someone in stabbings, have lost people because of drownings. The accidental, violent—and suicides—so many causes of death that are significantly higher up north than they are down south.

AMT: And so when you hear that clip of the minister responsible, Ms. Harpauer, saying you know, in an ideal world, realistically though I'm not sure it's possible to have enough services in these remote communities, how do you react to that?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: I'm outraged. I think we live in Canada and I think that means that one of our values is that we take care of each other and just because it's inconvenient to take care of people who are living rural, who are living northern, who have a lower socio-economic status, who happen to be First Nations, that doesn't mean that we get to not take care of them. That's not acceptable. There are children living up there. There are grandparents living up there. There are people who would be our family if we had been born up there and we don't get to say no, it's inconvenient. We won't provide help. I’m also a little bit disgusted because what she's saying is we're spending millions of dollars, we haven't made it better. And that's like a contractor coming in saying welp, I have spent millions of dollars painting the upper floors of your house and your foundation’s still screwed up. So you're going to have to live with a messed up foundation. That's not a contractor you rehire. That's not a contractor that you continue to have working on your house. And I hope that as Canadians, we choose a government that's not going to keep saying, “We're throwing money at a problem. It's not making it better. And we haven't changed how we're throwing the money at it.”

AMT: And you do go to these other communities—and we’re talking about La Loche because of the shootings a year ago—but you're saying that you see parallel issues in the other. What are the other communities you go to?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: So I go to Stony Rapids, which also will include Black Lake, as they live quite close together, and to La Ronge, where there was the string of young female suicides, just young girls 14 and under who committed suicide quite recently.

AMT: Why do you do this work?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Well, I think you can't ask a psychiatrist why they do anything without getting a long winded answer. But I feel like there's a commitment to helping the most vulnerable people in our society, the people who aren't getting helped by the system the way it's set up now. And I would like to be one of the people who's providing that care.

AMT: And so how many times a month do you actually travel into these communities? You go once a month to La Loche and you go, what's the rest of the time?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: So once a month to Stony Rapids and once a month to La Ronge. So it ends up being three days a month that I will spend up north. Ideally, contracts coming along that will fund those three days a month as well as one day a week of Telehealth follow up, which we might be able to provide more flexibly than the traditional Telehealth method, so that we can actually get people care who maybe aren’t comfortable coming to clinic or get people care when my flights get cancelled. It's not ideal to do it over a TV, but at least we're getting someone seen and I can follow up on how their medication’s doing.

AMT: And so if you could have more services in these places that you could then send people to after you assess them, what would you want the government to put in these communities?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: Well, looking at mental health usually involves biological, psychological and social part. Definitely I'm trying to provide the biological part and to help me with that, sometimes I need extra people like psychiatric nurses, community mental health nurses, who can go out and see the people who are ill enough from their mental health issue that they can't bring themselves in to see me. So those kinds of supports would be wonderful. From a psychological perspective, more counselling would be quite useful, but we are going to run into a problem where people aren't necessarily willing to go see someone who's living in their community who they're related to or friends with and where we have trouble recruiting other people. Where I'd love to see work is on the social part because as Mr. Hatch was saying, programs get brief funding when there's energy or interest from the government for whatever reason—usually because of a tragedy—and then it peters out. And I've had many of my patients tell me that it's sending this message that the government wants to kill them. As soon as a program starts making them feel good about themselves, starts working, funding dries up and it's cancelled. So I'd actually like to see more consistent social programs that are put into place to help youth feel good about themselves and develop a positive identity so they don't have to reach out to more destructive ways of creating an identity.

AMT: Because I understand there's not much to even do there for youth, huh?

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: And you know some of the youth are finding things that they enjoy doing: ski-dooing. They do what a lot of youth here do: watch Netflix. But that process of creating a positive identity, a good sense of yourself, an idea that you have control over your life is more complicated than just having rec volleyball league to go to.

AMT: Right. Right. Sara Dungavell, we have to leave it there, but thank you so much for your time today.

DOCTOR SARA DUNGAVELL: No worries. Thanks.

AMT: That is Dr. Sara Dungavell. She's a psychiatrist who flies in once a month to treat people in La Loche. And she joined us from our Saskatoon studio today. Let us know what you think of what she had to say. You can tweet us, we are @thecurrentCBC, or you can go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. In our next half hour, diversity in higher learning. We're talking about that when we're back in 90 seconds. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Black PhD students call out racism in Canadian academia

Guests: Huda Hassan, Sam Tecle, Malinda Smith

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. “If you are a black woman applying for grad school and would like a writer and PhD student to revise your statement, email me.” That tweet came from Huda Hassan—she put it out earlier this month—a simple offer of help to black women applying to graduate schools. And the response was immediate. Huda Hassan’s tweet has been shared more than 2,500 times. Perhaps more importantly, it has helped to start a conversation about diversity on university campuses. Huda Hassan is a PhD student at the University of Toronto's Women and Gender Studies Institute. She's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

HUDA HASSAN: Hi.

AMT: Well, so why did you put that offer out?

HUDA HASSAN: I guess I was thinking about like where I was this time last year when I was in the process of applying for a PhD program. And I was thinking about, I guess, the struggles or like the issues and the stress that I was going through and the anxieties I was going through my program and the lack of support I guess, that I felt. Except that I did luckily receive some support from strangers who were black women, who were all already in academia and who already understood how important it was for me to not only get support from them and get into this program, but that it was a very lonely process. So I guess it was just my way of paying it forward and trying to do the same thing.

AMT: When you say lonely process, what do you mean?

HUDA HASSAN: I don't have a lot of people around me, I guess, who've gone through the process of academia. I'm the first person in my family to be doing a PhD, so I didn’t really have—

AMT: You didn't know where to turn.

HUDA HASSAN: Yeah.

AMT: Just to like talk about the stuff that can move you forward.

HUDA HASSAN: Yeah.

AMT: And get the encouragement. You didn’t have a mentor?

HUDA HASSAN: Mmm…

AMT: No prof kind of said gee, you’re really great at this. You should think about that? You didn’t get that kind of encouragement?

HUDA HASSAN: I think the transition from like your Masters to your PhD, you have like, your supervisor’s there for you. They know the next step that you want to make and stuff but like no one's really explaining like the structure of a personal statement and giving you like the details or like tips as to what makes a really sharp application.

AMT: And that's make or break really, isn't it?

HUDA HASSAN: Yeah.

AMT: So the response was immediate. Tell us about that response.

HUDA HASSAN: I mean it was incredible. I was just telling Sam earlier that I got—I think it's now about like 120 applications that I've received from young black women, some men too—who've been trying to slide in there—from all over Canada, the US and even parts of East Africa. But I've also been getting a lot of incredible support from black faculty who've been hearing about this, both again in Canada and the US, who've been offering their help and their support, reaching out, trying to get the conversation. It's been pretty incredible.

AMT: Wow. And you say you’re getting these applications. So these are people looking for your help in making these applications better? They’re sending you what they've got and they want you to help them get them through it?

HUDA HASSAN: Yeah because like when I wrote that tweet, I specified that I'm both a journalist and a PhD student. So I'm offering to look at the applications from, I guess, as an individual in academia— looking at the structure of the statement, the theoretical frameworks that they're using, if they're particularly in fields that I know or understand. And then I also look at it from a journalistic perspective, making sure the grammar is there, the sentence structure, et cetera.

AMT: And so this is your new project. Are you sleeping at all?

HUDA HASSAN: Definitely not. Definitely not. I wouldn't be surprised if I fell asleep in the middle of this conversation. [laughs]

AMT: And you’re helping everyone—we’ll give you caffeine. [laughs] You're helping everyone for free.

HUDA HASSAN: Yes. Some people have been offering donations. I guess I'm too lazy to set up PayPal. I haven't really done that yet but it's pretty much free.

AMT: So when you applied to a PhD program, did you hesitate? When you were going into it, what kinds of concerns and hesitations did you have that you had to overcome?

HUDA HASSAN: I mean I think anyone entering into a PhD program has to contemplate: am I willing to do this for four, five, six, seven years? But I was afraid of it because I do personally know some black women who have started the process and unfortunately stepped away from it. And I heard their reasons why. I've seen some of that so far and I had to really sit down and contemplate that, for about a year, like if this was something that I was willing to go through or if I could go through it and how I would be able to do that.

AMT: And the reasons why, related to the fact that they were black women.

HUDA HASSAN: Yeah.

AMT: Like what?

HUDA HASSAN: I mean I guess this entire conversation can explore it. But I mean when it comes to like finances, micro aggressions, macro aggressions, like all sorts of things.

AMT: Give me an example of a micro aggression.

HUDA HASSAN: I've already experienced this: continuously being mistaken for a student when you're a TA, if you walk into like certain classroom spaces. Yeah.

AMT: Macro aggression would be?

HUDA HASSAN: I’m still figuring this part out but I guess like, when it comes to which projects and what type of research is funded and prioritized when it comes to funding opportunities, the financial aspect of it.

AMT: Is affected by the fact that you're a black woman.

HUDA HASSAN: Also like the type of research that you're doing. I think there's definitely a hierarchy of disciplines and which disciplines or fields are considered worthy of being funded and some that are not.

AMT: Okay. Huda Hassan, a PhD student at the University of Toronto. Stay with us. Sam Tecle is a PhD student on the executive of the Black Graduate Students Collective at York University and he is also in our studio and you were nodding as she is speaking. What makes you nod?

SAM TECLE: I mean I think the fact that many of her experiences are also mine, of also the black graduate students at York and PhD students that I've come across both in Canada, the US, even internationally, about how our work and the body of knowledge or experience comes to be valued in these departments or not. I mean what Huda’s initiative aims to direct is just to get us into the door. Some of the experiences that we've had at York University, which kind of just thrusted us upon forming a collective, is to kind of create these communities of care in places that we know don't really have maybe too much love for us. So how do we create these communities amongst each other, protect each other and get through and finish because many, many black graduate students also face the fact that they don't complete—probably mainly because of finances, of the work not being valued, of certain projects not being funded—all kind of coalesce into certain types of experiences of who gets through and who doesn't.

AMT: Hmm. So tell me more about what life on campus is like for you, Sam.

SAM TECLE: I mean it’s much, much of the same as Huda was starting to describe, around the fact that I guess entering a space as a PhD student, as a person who might have knowledge or as a student. I think I've been on the radio before talking about how I've actually been stopped and carded on campus. I've been a student at York since 2002, three, four degrees later, and still get asked what I'm doing on campus. Where am I going? Why am I here?

AMT: What do you say?

SAM TECLE: Oh, I literally told them, it’s really crazy. I'm getting a PhD in sociology.

AMT: And what did they say?

SAM TECLE: Most of them is pretty shocked. I mean they're taken aback and rightly so because—

AMT: But that’s your point.

SAM TECLE: Yeah, exactly. Rightly so. We don't populate these spaces as we're supposed to. And I think even the way in which Huda was describing her experience is a structural thing, right? Because if you walk in any of our campuses, the undergraduate student population looks really diverse. It's colourful. But that's when the students are putting the investment into the university. And when you become a graduate student, the hope—or a PhD student—is that the university or the institution will value you and your work. And we don't see that diversity reach all the way up to PhD student programs and we don't form critical masses in our departments. So very often, we have to seek support or communities of care by our own making, by finding Huda at U of T, or finding the collective of black graduate students that we formed at York to just make sure we kind of survive and finish.

AMT: You are both PhD students, but you're saying even as like an undergrad who might be considering going into a Master's program, there's not the encouragement to keep on going? Is that what you’re telling me?

SAM TECLE: Exactly, right. Because that's not institutionalized, right? That's kind of “by design”, us to kind of persist through. I found my supervisor Professor Carl James at York. He's been my supervisor for my Master's and now for my PhD and we've formed a long relationship and we've had constant conversations around this to know that this is a reality. Right? And I think what's an interesting story from Huda’s story was that when my professor was being interviewed for his job, he worked on black youth making it and it was you know about life chances of black youth. And he told me the story. He remembers being asked, well, isn't that research quite limited in scope? How can you apply that research that you've done on young black Caribbean students in Toronto to a wider perspective? And to think of what kind of fuels that kind of question, it's basically asking what relevance is it to just study black people? And I think that is a dangerous train of thought that I think we're trying to push back with us doing our own PhDs.

AMT: What is the topic of your PhD?

HUDA HASSAN: I’m looking at the Diasporas that come out of East Africa, coming into Canada, the US and the UK, right? So how do Eritreans, Ethiopians or Somali Diasporas negotiate black identification, enter into conversations around blackness? So I'm looking at that from different, I guess, national perspective.

AMT: And Huda, what is your PhD?

HUDA HASSAN: I was just telling Sam earlier that like my project coming in or like my proposed project it's like being radically, I guess, challenged and changed.

SAM TECLE: It happens.

HUDA HASSAN: But I'm interested in the criminalization of young Somali men in Canada, particularly around the Rob Ford events, how they were inscribed as black criminals during that process.

AMT: You're both studying very interesting things. But what you're saying is that—and obviously intellectually you will be challenged and pushed—but what you're saying is that there's an undercurrent of some of those challenges that has to do more with your race and nothing to do with your topic.

HUDA HASSAN: I think it's both.

SAM TECLE: Yeah. I think that sometimes we might—or it's the tradition of scholarship and maybe of the academia as well implicated in this—that studying black people or studying their lives, their life chances, their outcomes, what they might think on issues of philosophy and sociology on the world, might not be as applicable to wider populations.

AMT: So it's seen as less worthy.

SAM TECLE: Perhaps.

AMT: Is what you’re saying. And when you talk about diversity, how do you identify or define diversity?

SAM TECLE: I think for me, in my work, I am actively trying—as I write my dissertation—to stay away from the word “diversity”. I find it to be the window dressing on most conversations. It's when your department asks you to be in the you know entrance video or on the website. But how do you substantively deal with issues of difference, of issues of who is in the room and who is not, who gets the job or not. And I think those are much more, much more engaging conversations for me because I think diversity has a lot of baggage and it's just, it's all about how things look rather than what we're actually doing substantively.

AMT: And you're saying yes, Huda. What do you want to say to that?

HUDA HASSAN: No, I definitely agree. I think it's just like a fluffy term. I think it's about this idea of like let's brand difference but it doesn't acknowledge or deal with the power structures, right? It's a very fluffy term.

AMT: Well, I want to bring someone else in who's listening and who can give us some wider context on all of this. Malinda Smith is a political science professor and president of the Academic Women's Association at the University of Alberta. She is the co-author of The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities. Malinda Smith joins us from Edmonton. Hello. Welcome.

MALINDA SMITH: Hello. Thank you.

AMT: Well, first of all, I just want to get your thoughts as you listen to my other two guests. Right away, what are you thinking?

MALINDA SMITH: I appreciate what they’re saying and what saddens me or disappoints me is that was my experience over 20, 25 years ago in graduate school. I think very little has changed for black students and certainly you see this all the way through into Master's, PhDs, postdocs and university professors, and that we have had to basically survive on our own and to find networks of support. And certainly with regard to the concept “diversity”, you see more and more people—critical scholars—are moving away from that concept because it acts as a cover or mask for the persistence of racial inequity and racial injustice, whether you call it the persistence of a culture of what Frances Henry calls, “a culture of whiteness”. I think the point is correct that in 2016, 40 per cent of students that entered first year in Canada were visible minorities, racialized minorities, and of course black students, Chinese students, South Asian students, the numbers vary, but this is not reflected in the [inaudible] nor is it affected in university leadership. And so the point is well taken, that the only time universities seem to draw on us is for the video or the brochure or the website images.

AMT: Okay. Let me break down some of the stuff you're saying because you made a couple of really important points that I want to follow up on. First of all, you have looked at numbers.

MALINDA SMITH: Yes.

AMT: But the numbers don't actually parse out. When we talk about again, that word “diversity”, they talk about white and non-white, don’t they? They don't get into specifics.

MALINDA SMITH: Well, some numbers get into specifics. For example, in The Equity Myth, one of the chapters that Peter Li does—and Peter Li is a distinguished sociologist at the Royal Society of Canada. He does look at the breakdown using Stats Canada data for white professors, Chinese, Asians, black. He goes through all of the visible minority categories plus white professors and Aboriginal. And he does show the under-representation of black professors as well as some Asians and Chinese. Those are the three largest visible minority categories in Canada. More though, it shows the extreme under-representation that black professors and that also plays out in terms—in Peter Li’s study, it's called differences in employment and income at Canadian universities—and it also shows blacks are under-represented but also underpaid. This actually reinforces a study that CAUT did in 2010 and it goes back to the [unintelligible] report in 1984.

AMT: I’m sorry, Canadian Association of University Teachers.

MALINDA SMITH: Yes.

AMT: Okay. Keep going.

MALINDA SMITH: Yes. They did a study on—it was a question mark, the title, a changing professoriate or changing academy and basically the question was the answer. No, it's not changing. So universities remain—they concluded that universities remain overwhelmingly white and male and my studies with the Academic Women's Association with Kisha Supernaut at the University of Alberta shows that that's actually true, that the universities are overwhelmingly white and male. So women are about a third of the professoriate. So women are also significantly under-represented at all levels of the academy.

AMT: You've also looked at university presidents. What did you find?

MALINDA SMITH: We found that university presidents, of the 97 in Canada, only one’s black. So one per cent. And overall, only seven are you would call a visible minority, so South Asian, West Asian and so on. So university presidents are primarily white and male because women are only about 18 to 19 per cent. This changes of course in colleges. I looked at U15, which are the top research universities and was surprised, actually astonished, to find that there was such a homogeneity, almost exclusively white. There are no women of colour or Aboriginal women in any leadership position. I don't just mean presidents. I mean vice presidents, research, vice-provosts—any of the senior leadership positions—almost exclusively a club of whiteness.

AMT: In our top research universities in Canada.

MALINDA SMITH: In the top research universities in Canada, whatever province you are in. And I have tried to duplicate this. There are 32 Ontario universities I looked at. There are 19 in Quebec. There are nine in British Columbia. Alberta’s eight. And you will find very low diversity. So universities have been giving lip service to diversity for 30 years, but when you actually break that down—I use the concept of diversifying whiteness.

AMT: And that's what I need to talk to you about now. Tell me more about what you're saying. Pull that apart a bit.

MALINDA SMITH: So universities use the concept diversity and people actually think that includes racialized minorities, black professors, Aboriginal professors, whether Metis, Inuit or First Nations. But actually, when you look at the practices that universities engage in, what they're primarily doing is focusing on women. And all the women they focus on or they tend to advance are primarily white. Or they are focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer. So they are diversifying gender and sexual minorities. And again, when you unpack that, almost all of them—the focus is primarily men, white men.

AMT: And same with disabilities?

MALINDA SMITH: Persons with disabilities are almost always not studied in the professoriate, more among students. If you can think through the data and say well, there are still few scholars of colour and Aboriginal scholars that some would be persons with disabilities—since of course, we all have disabilities across our lifespan—but there are few. So that is actually in terms of the equity research and diversity research, persons with disabilities often are not taken up and you have to ask the question why they are often left out. This is also true of racialized minorities.

AMT: Okay. So do universities—you've done the study that looks at this—universities are supposed to have equity offices and ways to promote the kind of diversity that you're actually saying is missing.

MALINDA SMITH: Yes. And when we started this with Frances Henry, Carl James, Ena Dua, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos at Dalhousie, this four-year social science and humanities research grant, funded grant to look at equity, we weren't sure what we would find but we knew that would be under-representation. But we also found that it was actually worse than we had imagined, I think, because the institutional support for dealing with racialized scholars is absolutely not there. Universities are ill-equipped to address even racism. And so you see the proliferation, of course, on Canadian campuses particularly in the aftermath of the US elections and Canadian universities are responding as if they have no infrastructure to deal with it. There's no effort to deal with racialized harassment or bullying or hostile climate. And I should tell you that since the 1990s in particular, there have been over half a dozen taskforce on anti-racism beginning with the 1992 National Symposium for University Presidents on Institutional Strategies for Race and Ethnic Relations, [unintelligible] at Guelph, and still, you had Ryerson’s taskforce, you had the Queen's taskforce on the culture of whiteness. Ontario students have had reports of anti-racism in Ryerson University. So it begs the question: given all these taskforce and reports, what has happened?

AMT: Okay. And my guests in the studio with me are nodding as they listen to you. So you're saying that it's a twofold issue though. You're talking about the racism on campus that is identified as a violent act—and that's my word, I know—against individuals because of the colour of their skin. But you're also talking about policies that do not promote people of colour into bigger jobs—administrative or professorial—at these schools.

MALINDA SMITH: The bias and the racism begins from graduate school to reinforce, which the guests are saying. And that includes from even the first email to enquire about studying at universities, I can't ever imagine—I'm in political science as a discipline and I don't know more than one or two black women who are professors in the discipline of political science across Canada. Across Canada. So I am in a faculty where I think there may be three of us. So it seems to me the question is people don't notice the absence because I think there is—what Philomena Essed refers to as a preference for sameness or cultural cloning. There's a tendency to hire people like who’s already there and that reinforces with the old boys’ network or the existing culture of whiteness. So when racism is experienced, it's actually dismissed or cover up because the majority don't recognize it as a problem. And it leads to a retention issue for students, but it also leads to, as the Queen’s report on the culture of whiteness points out, it leads to a retention issue for faculty as well.

AMT: Right. So let me just ask Sam Tecle: are you planning to work as a professor? Is that what you want to do?

SAM TECLE: I mean that is the hope and plan but after that picture that Professor Smith drew, I mean the Canadian prospects do look—they look bleak. And I mean I think we understood that coming into the profession when all of the professors that we know that are black—and we know all of them like personally—and they offered these types of support to us. So I think it is. It's an uphill battle, right? It's a trek. And I think that also produces a certain kind of black PhD students leaving and going other places because the prospects or their work not being valued in Canadian universities, I think that is a real—

AMT: So they get recruited elsewhere where they are more valued.

SAM TECLE: Yeah. Very often.

AMT: Okay. I want to say what's the answer as if we can figure it out in the next 45 seconds. However. So what do we need to be thinking about, Huda?

HUDA HASSAN: I don't even know how to answer that. I mean… It's already interesting that like this conversation is—I mean this is not the first time this conversation’s come up, right? This is not anything brand new. Me putting up that tweet and like us being here today, it's not anything brand new. I think it's shocking though that people's reactions are still pretty much the same in the sense like oh really? I didn't realize that there was like an issue of under-representation with like black faculty and students and administrators? That's even another boring topic.

AMT: Well, Malinda Smith, how has your study been accepted?

MALINDA SMITH: Well, certainly there is a lot of interest in the speaking at various forums. My sense though, is I am mindful of this because we have been doing this—I've been doing this work over 25 years in Canadian universities. And so I think people listen. But the question is what is done? And I actually, so from my point of view, I would call on Universities Canada, which represents 97 universities in Canada—the university presidents are there—to actually undertake their own taskforce, but actually to how to develop a program of action to address this exclusion and under-representation of racialized minority. I have actually called for a royal commission on visible minorities to look at all of the groups why we continue to be shut out—not just shut out of university leaderships—but the judges, police, corporate boards. Every major institution, you will find a similar problem of under-representation. So as Canada moves to 150th discussions, anniversary discussions, we have to say: where have all the racialized minorities gone, such that we can hardly see them in any institutional leadership positions in Canada? And that starts from the very beginning, from graduate schools, all the way up to the pipeline. We’re leaking out. And that means our universities and our institutions are failing us in some way.

AMT: Okay. And I guess if they weren't, we wouldn't need a student taking matters into her own hands and now having to help all these other people because no one else is doing it.

MALINDA SMITH: Voluntarily.

AMT: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So thank you for raising this again, Huda. And thank you, all of you, for being part of this discussion.

HUDA HASSAN: Thanks for having us.

SAM TECLE: Thanks for having us.

MALINDA SMITH: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

AMT: That is Huda Hassan, a PhD student at the University of Toronto. Sam Tecle is a PhD student and on the executive of the Black Graduate Students Collective at York University. They're here in our Toronto studio. Malinda Smith is a political science professor. She's also the president of the Academic Women's Association at the University of Alberta. The study she co-authored is called The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities. She joined us from Edmonton. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to this. Tell us your experiences with—I'm going to use the word “diversity” even though it's not the right word—at university. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. E-mail us: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. q Is next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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January 16, 2017 full episode transcript

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