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The Current Transcript for February 15, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I am proud of my culture and the beauty it has to offer. I am proud that it continues to overcome the many atrocities that have tried to break us.

LAURA LYNCH: There is pride in Marlene Orgeron’s voice, even as she shares the memories of a childhood lost. Taken from her parents sent to live with a family in the United States, she is one among thousands of Indigenous children who were part of the infamous Sixties Scoop. Now an Ontario judge has ruled that the federal government failed in its duty to protect those children from harm and to preserve their culture and traditions. Today we'll hear from the minister of Indigenous and Northern affairs on what comes next. And then—

SOUNDCLIP

He’s like a maniac and you gotta give him credit. How many young guys—who was like 26 or 25 when his father died—take over these tough generals?

LL: That was US president Donald Trump's analysis of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un back in January. And if there is turmoil in the White House these days, it may pale in comparison to what's going on in the regime. The Supreme Leader's brother was murdered earlier this week. His uncle was executed in 2013. It all raises questions about Kim's leadership even as North Korea appears to be testing Trump by testing a nuclear capable missile. We'll get insight into what's happening inside that secretive nation. And if all that isn't enough to worry you—

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Well folks, I'm glad you could come down to see my fallout shelter. Just finished painting it last night.

VOICE 2: Looks like a nice job, Walt.

LL: Well, that may sound like a blast from the past—talk of bomb shelters and such. But you might be surprised to learn there is a spike in sales of custom designed buildings meant to withstand the fallout from a nuclear bomb. In January, the so-called “Doomsday Clock” moved 30 seconds closer to midnight—that signifying the end of the world. So, would you want to survive? I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

'We want to fix this': Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett on Sixties Scoop ruling

Guests: Carolyn Bennett

SOUNDCLIP

The Sixties Scoop has come to this day. It is a great day in Canada when Canada's judicial system chooses to say that our children are so valuable and sacred and precious, that we will protect them by the law. What a day this is. Yes.

[Sound: Cheering and applause]

LL: And that is Marcia Brown Martel, the lead plaintiff in the Sixties Scoop lawsuit reacting to a ruling in their favour yesterday. She was one of 16,000 Indigenous children in Ontario who were taken from their families and communities starting in the 1960s. They were placed in non-Indigenous homes. That action sanctioned by the federal government has come to be known as the Scoop. Yesterday after an eight-year legal battle, an Ontario Supreme Court judge ruled the government violated its duty of care when it failed to protect the cultural identity of the Indigenous children removed from their communities. The plaintiffs are seeking $1.3 billion in damages and negotiating that settlement is the next part of the process. But yesterday Marcia Brown Martel also talked about the kinds of resolution she wants to see with the government.

SOUNDCLIP

One, to be inclusive—resolution must be sought for all survivors in Ontario—not just those in this class action. Two, honour our history—resolution must ensure that the history of the Sixties Scoop survivors is acknowledged as a part of Canada's history. It must be permanently removed from the dark. Three, enable healing—resolution should ensure that survivors have access to the supports and resources that will enable them to deal with the trauma they have suffered and become well. Ensure a resolution should honour the spirit of “never again”. Never again.

LL: Carolyn Bennett is the minister of Indigenous and Northern affairs and she is joining us now from Ottawa. Hello.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Hello.

LL: Minister Bennett, what's the federal government's next step in addressing a settlement here?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think as Chief Brown said, the next step is to sit down and have a conversation about the things that really matter to the survivors. And you know I think she's articulated them very well, to be inclusive and to make sure that the history is well-known, but the supports for healing. And again the prevention of never again—the understanding now how important secure personal cultural identity is, how that feeds into self-esteem and resilience and a sense of control over your life and that when that piece is taken from you, serious harm is done. And that's what the federal government is saying. We acknowledge that harm was done and we want to get on and right those wrongs. But we also want to put in place—and I think this is what we're hearing from a lot of the claimants and survivors—is that they want to see that language and culture protection, revitalization, promotion for all the kids and all the people who lost it, as we are trying to do in the school system and what the prime minister has announced with the language act and for us to be able to really secure that that language and culture.

LL: Let's go back to this case though because you say that's what the government saying. It's also what a judge had to say, which is what is now going to cause this negotiation to go forward. Let's just be clear—

CAROLYN BENNETT: But Laura, I just want to say—

LL: Is your government going to appeal the decision?

CAROLYN BENNETT: We have no intention of going back to court. In fact Laura, we've been trying to get all of these cases out of court really since we formed government and we were able to settle the Anderson case, which again was about language and culture. Even when Newfoundland wasn't even in Canada yet, we were able to settle that court case. So this is what we are trying to do is say that this is about a conversation about a dark terrible chapter in Canada’s history and we want to right those wrongs.

LL: If you want to get these cases out of court though, there are others other class actions similar to this that are waiting to be certified. Are you now saying that you will not contest those claims?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think what we're saying is that we hope that people don't feel they have to go to court because we want to sit down at the table with people who obviously have a history where harm was done and we want to be able to as Chief Brown said, we want to be able to hear from people and be able to in good faith, the truth telling, the respect. We understand how serious this is when people are taken away from their language and culture.

LL: But I just want to be clear here because you say you don't want them to go to court but it takes two to make a lawsuit. So are you saying they should now just come to the table with you? You will negotiate with them instead of court?

CAROLYN BENNETT: I think that's what we've been trying to do over the past year Laura, is to try and encourage as many people to come to the table. It takes two to get out of court and we've been trying to do that and we've been very successful. Hopefully there's rightfully cynicism, there's rightfully a history and we want people to know that we have a real commitment to reconciliation that is about dialogue and negotiation instead of litigation.

LL: Okay. In the Ontario case, they were asking for $1.3 billion in damages. What does that say to the government? Are you ready to pay out that much? Are you ready to pay out more?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think that the issue is getting to the table first. And I think that what we are hearing is that the money is important but so is their assurance that language and culture will be there for all the kids going forward but also there for those that lost it. And how do we get more language speakers? How do we make sure that these people that lost their language and culture have access to the programs that are necessary and how do we help really right these wrongs in all ways?

LL: Understood, but the case itself asked for money as at least part of the settlement here. Are you willing to write the cheque?

CAROLYN BENNETT: I have a mandate from cabinet to negotiate and that's what we'll do.

LL: Now as part of the other part of resolution that Marcia Brown Martel is calling for, she wants an official acknowledgement, an apology. What are the plans with respect to that? Can we expect to see the prime minister issue an official apology?

CAROLYN BENNETT: You know it's interesting Laura, that with [unintelligible], how important the apology was to that group in Manitoba and how important the words in the apology needed to reflect exactly what the survivors needed to hear said. And so absolutely, that's what the negotiation always is about, is what do you need for you to feel that the harm, that the wrongs have been righted?

LL: So the apology is forthcoming. It's the wording that will be a matter of negotiation.

CAROLYN BENNETT: It's a matter of when we sit down at the table, what are the things that the survivors and the claimants need?

LL: When you think about what is the need for resources and support to heal those who have suffered from trauma, what kinds of things do you think the government can offer?

CAROLYN BENNETT: You know I think that what we're hearing coast to coast to coast is the need for wellness, healing. But also that colonizing is part of wellness, as the Hollow Water studies showed, that what is often called healing is also decolonization therapy. It is about First Nations, Inuit, Metis getting back in in charge of health, education, child welfare systems. It is about again getting rid of the paternalism and being able to say that people will design these programs themselves and be able to provide what is needed coast to coast to coast.

LL: Now I know you say you wanted to get these cases out of court but the government—yours and the previous one—have come under a lot of criticism for numerous attempts to have the case dismissed and delayed. Last week, government lawyers requested a delay of the judgment and then pulled it back. I want you to listen to what Marcia Brown Martel had to say about the government's attitude in this case.

SOUNDCLIP

Canada has been very consistent in their approach to how to deal with the Sixties Scoop. If I shut my eyes and push it away, it will go away eventually. Well, that wasn't going to happen and that wasn't realistic to think that you know we're just going to go away because our children are valued. We want them back. We have to stand up and say this can't happen anymore.

LL: Minister, the judge wrote in his decision the evidence for the plaintiffs was insurmountable, that some of the government's submissions were “odd and insulting.” How do you explain the government's legal actions toward this case?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think you know Chief Brown you know has a long history in terms of what it felt like leading this really important case. As critic, I met with Sixties Scoop people. I certainly believed as the judge did that that was a clear case, that harm had been done and that we needed to settle this and right the wrongs which is really what our government's been trying to do from the beginning. We want to fix this.

LL: But the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, Jeffrey Wilson, said there had been numerous attempts to negotiate with the government. The government refused and instead spent all these years trying to delay and get the case dismissed.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Yeah. I must say that in my experience as minister, we needed to be and wanted to get to the table to negotiate and that is completely different than having it dismissed. We want these wrongs to be righted and this is from our heart. We know this has to be fixed and we want to do it.

LL: And I hear you speaking from your heart. This lawsuit is one case. Since you’ve come into power, your government has pledged a new relationship with Indigenous Canadians, made promises and yet we keep hearing Indigenous people feeling angry, feeling let down. Why shouldn't they feel disillusioned?

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think that cynicism and disillusion is absolutely understandable and that people want not only reconciliation, but reconcili-action. And we believe that settling these cases, each one we are able to settle and able to negotiate a fair and just settlement is a step towards that reconciliation and concrete actions such that we know we've got a big job rebuilding the trust and that's what we're setting up to do.

LL: But you can understand—I mean I'm not just talking about the cases here—I'm talking about a range of other issues that you're dealing with in your portfolio. They're feeling like this government is letting them down.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Well, I think that—but lots are feeling very excited by the kinds of exploratory tables to get people to self-government, the water systems, the money in language and culture to the schools. I think the new schools that have been built, I think that we are really having to rebuild the relationship in terms of individuals, individual communities, but there's no question there's a lot of work to be done. And you know as Gord Downie says, there's 150 years behind us to learn from and 150 years ahead and we better just get to work. And that's what we're doing.

LL: Minister, I thank you for your time.

CAROLYN BENNETT: Thank you.

LL: Carolyn Bennett is the minister of Indigenous and Northern affairs Canada and she was in our Ottawa studio.

[Music: Bridge]

Back To Top »

How Atlantic Canada responds to mass whale strandings: marine mammal biologist

Guests: Tonya Wimmer

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

This is the third largest mass stranding that we've recorded in our history so it's a very large one. Logistically it's a massive undertaking.

[Sound: Water lapping]

LL: On Monday we brought you a story about a pod of pilot whales that had beached themselves in New Zealand. As many as 650 whales ended up on land. And even with the efforts of volunteer and professional rescuers, about 400 whales died. Now why this happened isn't entirely clear but for scientists like our guest David Lusseau, it was painful to watch.

SOUNDCLIP

Oh, it's horrible. You know science doesn't vaccinate you against emotion. So it's a pretty horrible thing and it's something that stays with you for a long time. You know once you kind of have this kind of relationship forming, even if you’re a scientist you know, it is akin to losing somebody that you know really, really well.

LL: Now Tonya Wimmer heard our interview and could relate. She is a marine mammal biologist and the director of the Marine Animal Response Society based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and it's been responding to marine mammal emergencies on Canada's east coast for almost 20 years. She wrote to tell us about the work that they do and that includes running a hotline coordinating responses and providing medic training. And we reached her today in Kanata, Ontario to tell us more about the situation in Canada. Hello.

TONYA WIMMER: Hi there.

LL: So how common are mass beachings on Canada's shores?

TONYA WIMMER: Well, to the extent that it happens in New Zealand not that often thankfully, we definitely don't get incidents sort of that large and I say that with touching wood because I would never want to—I can't even fathom the scale of what they were dealing with. But we do, especially through the Maritime provinces and a little bit into Newfoundland, we do get these kind of incidents regularly. For us a mass stranding is any time we get a live animal on a beach. There's more than one essentially. And so this does happen. I mean every year we probably have two or three incidents of a single animal or five or ten incidents of single animals and then we often will get a couple incidents of mass strandings.

LL: Well, tell us about two incidents on the east coast in 2015. First, what happened off of Cape Breton?

TONYA WIMMER: Right. So in August, I think it was on the fourth of August, we had phone calls about a mass stranding of pilot whales, so the same species or similar species to the one off New Zealand. That there were a lot of animals that were observed basically lying along the beaches and that most of them were alive. And I think for that one, there were about 19 individual animals. And so people were there on site and they were trying to upright the animals and at least get there their blowholes, essentially their nose, out of the water and get them sitting in sort of an upright position. And the thing is we don't know how long those animals were on the beach so people did try to refloat them and try to help them. And they were able to get quite a few out, although I do know that a few later returned and later died on the shore.

LL: And the second incident?

TONYA WIMMER: Yes. So this was a rather bizarre one for us because basically two days later, just a little bit down on the mainland shore of Nova Scotia, also in that southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, we had another incident of pilot whales, a group of about 14 I think, that we're milling very close to shore and they sort of kept getting caught in the shallows. The thought really was that they were following food so they just got disoriented and probably distracted a bit when the tide left. So we had been watching and been working with the local fisheries and oceans officers and the local fire department. People in the communities were exceptionally helpful in keeping an eye on them. And we got a little bit suspicious when they were getting really close, so a few of us from our response network actually went up the night before on the fifth and basically were waiting for, Fisheries and Oceans were going to do sort of a sweep very early in the morning to see where the animals were, and I think we got the call at about five after six o’clock in the morning saying that these animals were actually now stuck. So a response basically was initiated at that time.

LL: And were you able to rescue them?

TONYA WIMMER: Yeah. With that one it was pretty interesting because I think you know we were there essentially as the water was dropping, so the animals were definitely not out of water very long.

LL: Just how many are we talking about?

TONYA WIMMER: With that one it was 14 animals.

LL: Okay.

TONYA WIMMER: And mostly larger animals, although there were sort of a few juveniles in the group. I mean when we say larger, these are you know 15 foot plus animals. So they're fairly big animals. And so with that one though because we were basically on site as the mass stranding was happening essentially, it was just a matter of coordinating people and the thing too, is the word spread like wildfire in the sense that people just showed up and they were keen to help. We were very lucky actually to have, I think the chief of the local fire department there and he was fabulous. Same as the Fisheries and Oceans officers, you know they had the bulk of some of the equipment and the experience sort of talking to people in that community. So it was really good and we were able to get the animals out within, I mean it was almost only an hour and a half, 14 animals.

LL: We just got about 30 seconds left. I'm wondering like David Lusseau, I want to know what this personally is like for you doing this work.

TONYA WIMMER: It's very interesting because I mean on one hand, you kind of go into a bit of a zone thing, okay, let's figure out what we need do. But I mean I've studied these animals and other species for a long time so to see them in this condition and to hear them especially, it's a bit difficult to sort of be in that instance, but then also okay now we really need to focus on how to help them best and how to make sure people are safe is the key thing as well.

LL: Thank you very much for your time.

TONYA WIMMER: Thank you.

LL: Tonya Wimmer is a marine mammal biologist and the director of the Marine Animal Response Society in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Today she was in Kanata, Ontario. Well, the CBC News is coming up next and then it can be dangerous to be on the outs with a dysfunctional family, especially when the head of the family is North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Murder mystery in Malaysia after the news. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Back To Top »

Why Trump needs to develop a North Korea policy now: analyst

Guests: Barbara Demick, James Acton

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, how the fallout from the US election has doomsday shelter sales booming. Before that, murder and intrigue in North Korea's powerful first family. But first—

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's not just a Indigenous issue but it's everybody's issue.

[Sound: Applause]

VOICE 2: There was something about the death of Tina Fontaine that galvanized you though. What was it?

VOICE 3: Well, it was the disrespect to her person. That was the last straw for me and my family and my community, you know?

VOICE 4: For me, I'm not supposed to be here. Before smallpox came to our community, we had 30,000 people. In one month, we went to 300.

VOICE 5: How much of this, this burden of responsibility of educating, of talking about it, do our people have to bear before Canadians are going to get it? Before things are actually going to change?

VOICE 6: When they did release her picture, it was her mug shot. So you can imagine the responses we got.

VOICE 7: You can imagine for some of these families, no one talked to them for a decade and then suddenly the Vancouver Sun was writing and they went from a void of coverage to this overwhelming amount of coverage.

VOICE 4: I'm ready to like yell on the mountain tops and I'm ready to go. Like I will bring the people together and I will put my fist in the air. Everything I do. Waking up is supposed to be political. Me talking on this microphone is political.

LL: Those are voices from The Current’s public forums on missing and murdered Indigenous women that we've been holding across the country since last fall. On Wednesday, February the 22^nd, Anna Maria Tremonti will be hosting a public forum in Toronto. The taping of our show will take place in the Barbara Frum Atrium here at the CBC building on Front Street. We're also going to be showing our virtual reality documentary on the Highway of Tears. To find out more information and to reserve a free ticket, go to our website at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Bridge]

LL: Coming up—what is going on inside North Korea?

SOUNDCLIP

If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean he's like a maniac. Okay? And you've got to give him credit. How many young guys—he was like 26 or 25 when his father died—take over these tough generals? And all of a sudden, you know it's pretty amazing when you think of it. How does he do that? Even though it is a culture and it's a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over and he's the boss. It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean this guy doesn't play games and we can't play games with him.

LL: That “young maniac” US President Donald Trump so seems to admire is Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. Trump made those comments at a rally in January. He referred there to Kim Jong-un's uncle who had been executed in 2013 over allegations that he defied the regime. Now another death in the family. This time it’s Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam, reportedly assassinated at a Malaysia airport on Monday. Now little information passes out of the repressive North Korean dictatorship, but we do know that Kim Jong-nam was the oldest son of the country's former leader, Kim Jong-il, and was once seen as the natural heir to the leadership. But he had become estranged from the family, having lived abroad for many years before his death this week at the age of 45. Barbara Demick is a journalist and former Beijing bureau chief with the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and we have reached her today in New York City. Hello.

BARBARA DEMICK: Good morning.

LL: What do we know about Kim Jong-nam and how he died this week?

BARBARA DEMICK: Well, we know quite a bit about Kim Jong-nam. How he died is still under investigation.

LL: But let's go with how he died then. What do we know about that?

BARBARA DEMICK: He was at the Kuala Lumpur airport when he was ambushed by one or two young women who—depending on which version you believe—either sprayed him with some kind of poison through a cloth over his face or the initial report said injected him with a poison needle and he collapsed just a little bit after that in the departure lounge. He was headed back to Macau where he lives or lived. And it is assumed that these were North Korean agents and that he was assassinated.

LL: Quite a bold move. How likely is it do you think that that North Korea and Kim Jong-un specifically were behind it?

BARBARA DEMICK: Oh, extremely likely. There is no doubt that they had the motivation and this is completely within their modus operandi. There's actually been an arrest in Malaysia of a woman who seems to be a Vietnamese national. But I would assume that she was hired by somebody connected to the North Korean government.

LL: Now you say it fits the modus operandi. Do the details fit a pattern? Are there often things such as needles and agents moving about?

BARBARA DEMICK: Oh yeah. North Korea is always like a parody of itself. You know these assassinations seem to involve strange methods out of a cheap spy novel, usually attractive young female agents. You know they brought down an airliner. They did some needle attacks on North Korean critics operating out of China. Kim Jong-nam's first cousin was gunned down in South Korea some years ago. So this is very North Korea. And I don't think they even need plausible deniability. You know they just do it.

LL: Okay. So we've talked about the how. Let's take another step back and talk about Kim Jong-nam the man. Who was he?

BARBARA DEMICK: Well, he had a very tragic life. He was the first born of Kim Jong-il but he was always kind of living in secret. He was really the love child. Kim Jong-il ,as you know, was the son of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung. And Kim Jong-il had a long time affair with a married actress and that affair produced this love child, Kim Jong-nam and he was always sort of kept in secret, stashed away in these luxury villas. And after his grandfather died, you know he was acknowledged to be the heir but he never made it. The story that you'll read is that he was dropped in the line of succession after he was arrested in Tokyo trying to sneak into the country on a fake passport. It was a forged Dominican Republic passport. But I think the truth of the matter is he had become very westernized. He’d lived a lot of his young life abroad and he never really wanted to be dictator of North Korea. But at the same time, by his very existence, he posed a threat because this is you know a bloodline-based monarchy and he was next in line.

LL: When you say he posed a threat, a threat to who?

BARBARA DEMICK: A threat to Kim Jong-un.

LL: Okay. So he was caught. And I understand it wasn't just that he tried to get into Japan but he was trying to take his son to Disneyland?

BARBARA DEMICK: He was trying to take his son to Disneyland.

LL: Which I gather would be further evidence of his westernization. But he had left North Korea. What was his life like after he left the country?

BARBARA DEMICK: Well, he was living in Macau under the protection of the Chinese government. You know Macau is still overseen by Beijing and you know he was kind of a playboy. He had various wives and girlfriends. He liked to gamble, liked to drink. Photographs of him showed him always looking unshaven with his shirt tails hanging out. Although I think he was a fairly thoughtful fellow. When he was interviewed by journalists, it seemed like he had read quite a bit, was aware of things in the world. And you know didn't really believe in the North Korean system. He believed that North Korea had to open up and reform economically and he was very westernized in his mentality. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to be a dictator. But as I said by his very existence, he was a challenge to the regime.

LL: How much contact did he have with his family back home?

BARBARA DEMICK: Very little in recent years. I don't think he ever met Kim Jong-un. They were almost separate generations. They are about 15 years apart, different mothers. By the time Kim Jong-un was rising, Kim Jong-nam was in exile. He went back a few times. I think he went back briefly when his father was sick but he pretty much stayed in Macau.

LL: It's curious why this would have happened now. Had he said something recently that would have upset the regime?

BARBARA DEMICK: Not recently. He gave interviews a few years ago to a Japanese journalist. And there's two theories: one is that there was sort of a permanent you know hit order on him and this is when they had the opportunity. It's apparently not the first time there's been an attempted assassination of Kim Jong-nam. Another theory is that there is more instability inside North Korea and Kim Jong-un feels like he needed to get Kim Jong-nam out of the way. You know it could be either but he was definitely on a hit list. In fact, according to South Korean intelligence a few years back, he sent a letter to Kim Jong-un saying you know please just leave me and my family alone. I don't want anything to do with the leadership or the succession. But that was impossible because you know the truth of the matter is that anybody who was thinking about staging a coup d'etat—or regime change as the US government likes to call it—would look to Kim Jong-nam you know to use him to achieve some kind of legitimacy because the North Koreans are very into this whole bloodline emanating from Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-nam was really the first in succession.

LL: So you said he was being protected by China. So what role did China play—not in the assassination necessarily—but in the politics around Kim Jong-nam?

BARBARA DEMICK: Well, the Chinese government has not been happy with Kim Jong-un and the current direction of North Korea. They'd like North Korea to open up its economy and reform. Although you know the North Korean system of government was spawned by China's communist system. The Chinese don't really like this bloodline hierarchy either. And it seems like they looked also at Kim Jong-nam as somebody who is more reform minded and who they should have kept in their back pocket, you know in case they need this this card to use against Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-nam in an interview once that the Chinese were protecting him but also keeping an eye on him.

LL: Are there other relatives of Kim Jong-un who should be looking over their shoulders who are living abroad?

BARBARA DEMICK: Well, there are relatives living abroad. There’s an aunt and uncle who were interviewed by the Washington Post recently. But in terms of the direct line of succession, Kim Jong-un has an older brother. He's a few years older and he's living inside North Korea. And he also has a sister. And they seem to be part of the first family working with him. They’re full blood relatives. They have the same mother. They grew up together.

LL: So does that mean then that we've seen the end of the bloodletting or the end of the bloodletting for now?

BARBARA DEMICK: Oh, I'm sure not. Kim Jong-un is constantly purging members of the senior leadership and I think that will continue. I mean he is asserting his rule over North Korea, you know keeping in mind that all these people who could potentially challenge him are much older than he is and this is a culture in which age is venerated. So you know he's lacking some legitimacy just by his youth and I think he will continue to purge his elders until he feels more secure.

LL: Barbara Demick, thank you very much.

BARBARA DEMICK: Thank you.

LL: Barbara Demick is a journalist with the Los Angeles Times and she is the author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. She's in New York City. If it turns out that Kim Jong-nam's death in Malaysia was an assassination by the North Korean regime, it would be only the latest in a series of provocations by his half-brother, Kim Jong-un. Just days ago, North Korea test fired a nuclear-capable missile off its eastern coast in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. To help us understand what's going on in North Korea and what might be coming next, I'm joined now by James Acton. He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and we have reached him in Arlington, Virginia. Hello.

JAMES ACTON: Good morning. How are you?

LL: Fine, thank you. I want to hear your thoughts about North Korea's latest missile test. But first, what do you make of Kim Jong-nam's death?

JAMES ACTON: Well, listen, I mean my expertise is on the technical side rather than the political side. All I would say about the assassination is as your previous commentator pointed out, it's just the latest in a long series of these kind of actions by North Korea and it is deeply concerning that North Korea would flout international norms in this way and laws in this way and assassinate someone you know particularly in a third country.

LL: Alright then. Let's get to your area of expertise. North Korea did conduct its latest missile test on Sunday. How significant is it?

JAMES ACTON: I think this is a very significant test and a lot of the commentary over the last few days have been oh, it only went 500 kilometres. The North Koreans have been threatening to test a much longer ICBM. We shouldn't worry about this test very much. And I think that's a very significant mistake. In large part because most if not all of North Korea's previous tests of land-based missiles had been with liquid fuel. This was a solid fuel missile and that is a very significant technical enhancement for them. So the headline for this is not the range of the missile. It's the kind of fuel that it had.

LL: Why is that important?

JAMES ACTON: Well, developing solid fueled missiles would be a significant military advantage for North Korea. They are more mobile. You know all of North or most of North Korea's missiles are carried around on gigantic trucks to make them harder for the US in particular to hunt down. Solid fueled missiles tend to be more mobile. But critically, they're much faster to fire. With liquid fuel missiles, you have to—at least the kinds that North Korea has—you have to put some or all of the fuel in beforehand. That makes them very slow to fire. The solid fuel missiles can generally be fired in a few minutes. So again, over the long run that will significantly enhance the threat that North Korea's missile program poses both to you know US allies in the region, in the form of South Korea and Japan, then further down the line eventually to the US homeland itself.

LL: If they do develop that intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

JAMES ACTON: Yeah. And listen, I have no doubt that they are going to do that. North Korea has demonstrated a space launch vehicle which is a bit like an ICBM. It uses much of the same technology. That's a liquid fuel system. There's some exaggeration sometimes about the ease with which a space launch vehicle could be used as an ICBM. But listen, North Korea has demonstrated the technology. It's going to get a liquid fuel ICBM sooner rather than later if it invests in that path and it's going to get a solid fuel ICBM somewhat further down the line.

LL: Now North Korea and its nuclear program have bedeviled many American presidents. What do you think of President Trump's response to the missile test?

JAMES ACTON: Well, I was surprised that the president did not condemn the missile test. And I was slightly disappointed that he didn't emphasize the US commitment to South Korea as well as Japan. You know in fairness, it's always very difficult early in an administration when a lot of your key people are not yet in position to respond to these kinds of events. These are always difficult tests for young administrations. What I would say is I hope that the new administration gets a North Korea policy and a North Korea strategy sorted out pretty quickly. This is not a problem that it can kick down the road a year or two years. This is something that is going to—I think North Korea is going to be challenging the new administration regularly and I think the new administration needs a strategy sooner rather than later.

LL: Now President Trump has said China needs to help. Just listen to this. This is what he said on CNN earlier this year when he was still the president-elect.

SOUNDCLIP

China can come out and frankly they will—you know they say they don't have that much control over North Korea. They have total control because without China, they wouldn't be able to eat. So China has to get involved and China should solve that problem and we should put pressure on China to solve the problem. And if they don't solve that problem, we should be very tough on them with trade, meaning start charging them tax or start cutting them off. You’d have China collapse in about two minutes.

LL: Now there is a much tougher talking Trump from January, much tougher than the muted response we heard just a few days ago. What do you think? Will China help the United States and its allies deal with North Korea?

JAMES ACTON: Well, you know a few points. Firstly, I think the president significantly exaggerates the ability of China to kind of make the North Koreans come to heel at a moment's notice. That said, it's clear there is no country that has more influence than China. The question is how willing is China to use that influence? You know China has multiple concerns here. One of China's concerns is that if it—probably China's biggest concern as we understand it—is that if it puts too much pressure on North Korea and the North Korean regime collapses and North Korea and South Korea are unified, then China has lost its buffer because in theory you could have US troops north of the 38^th parallel and right on China's border potentially. So I think you know China's attitude toward North Korea is changing. We are seeing very slowly and gradually more skepticism about North Korea within the Chinese regime. China is not going to turn on a dime on that issue. China may over time be willing to slowly ramp up pressure but it's going to have to be a two-way thing. We're going to have to provide assurances to the United States, that is going to have to provide assurances to China that you know the US is going to respect Chinese interests on the peninsula. This is going to have to be a fairly negotiated transactional process and that's going to be very difficult.

LL: Then going forward in the next days, weeks, months, what are the White House's best options to contain North Korea?

JAMES ACTON: Well, with North Korea, I would rather talk about the least bad options rather than the best options. There really are not good options. I've come around to the view that the most realistic thing we should try to aim for right now is a moratorium on North Korean missile and nuclear tests. If North Korea wasn't testing nuclear weapons, if it wasn't testing long range missiles, then that would severely hinder its development program. It wouldn't roll back what it has at the moment. It's far from a panacea. Now there's a lot of challenges with doing that. I mean you're going to get into definitely definitional issues. We would want the North Koreans not to test space launch vehicles. They would say a space launch vehicle is not a missile and they should be allowed to test them. I don't know that problem is resolvable. I don't know what North Korea is going to ask in return. I mean if North Korea wants financial aid in return, that may be doable. If North Korea wants a peace treaty or an end to the US South Korean exercises, military exercises as it sometimes says, that could be a lot harder to negotiate. So you know I think one shouldn't be naive about diplomacy. It is tough and unlikely to succeed but compared to the other options, it seems to me the least bad.

LL: Okay then. Let's talk about some other options. Sanctions? Could they be effective?

JAMES ACTON: Well, I think sanctions have to come hand-in-hand with diplomacy. If the goal of sanctions is to ramp up sanctions and hope that the North Koreans will concede and give up everything, then anyone who thinks that is living in cloud cuckoo land. The idea that sanctions could be used to try and put pressure on the North Koreans to negotiate the kind of agreement I've outlined, that's a potential use for sanctions.

LL: Military action?

JAMES ACTON: Very, very risky. You know I've already been discussing how North Korea's forces are mobile. Even for the United States hunting down dispersed mobile missiles, it is very difficult and you know there's very, very high chance of failure because you know especially if you're dealing with nuclear armed missiles, you've got to get all of them. So I find military options deeply unattractive at the moment.

LL: So what do you think? What's North Korea's next move?

JAMES ACTON: Well, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea. In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, North Korea was testing both nuclear weapons and missiles at an unprecedented right. I think we're going to have to wait to see what pattern of provocation emerges from North Korea during the Trump administration. It's possible that this is you know the latest test, just the first of a long series. It's possible that maybe North Korea wants to ramp down tensions for the time being. It's a notoriously difficult actor to predict and as your you know your previous commentator indicated, a lot of this may depend on what's going on in North Korea domestically. How at risk Kim Jong-un feels, how much he feels he needs to try and bolster his position domestically for external provocations. And I just don't think we have a good handle on what's going on domestically.

LL: Alright. We will leave it there. James Acton, thank you.

JAMES ACTON: Thank you.

LL: James Acton is co-director of the nuclear policy program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And we reached him in Arlington, Virginia. Well, coming up next—

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Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.

[Sound: Explosion]

LL: A blast from the past is proving to be a big money maker in an increasingly anxious world. I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

[Music: Sting]

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Bomb shelter sales skyrocket in response to Trump presidency

Guests: Gary Lynch, Joseph Cirincione, Fred Armbruster

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

First, you duck. And then, you cover. And very tightly, you cover the back of your neck and your face. Duck and cover underneath a table or desk or anything else close by.

[Music: Jingle “Duck and Cover”]

LL: That was then. “Duck and cover” was the Cold War meme of the 1950s and sixties that symbolized the threat of nuclear attack and what to do in its aftermath. And this is now.

SOUNDCLIP

Wouldn't it be nice to have your own ranch or a place to take the family on weekends to enjoy the outdoors? A place to hunt and fish and ride ATVs and shoot your new guns? Wouldn't it be nice to have a secluded place with the underground bunker you've always dreamed of? A place where you can retreat to protect your family when the time of need arises?

LL: From those selling bomb shelters, business is reportedly booming and sellers point to the election of US President Donald Trump for the spike in interest. Gary Lynch is the co-owner and general manager of Rising S Bunkers. He joins me from Murchison, Texas. Hello.

GARY LYNCH: How are you this morning?

LL: Fine, thank you. What are your customers telling you? Why do they want a nuclear bomb shelter?

GARY LYNCH: They're afraid that Donald Trump is the kind of guy that instead of doing the right thing or the smart thing, he’ll have a knee-jerk reaction and takes us into war.

LL: And is very specific that they are worried about a nuclear attack?

GARY LYNCH: Yes, absolutely. You know we've always had you know clients on the right side of conservative politics and now we're starting to see people that maybe even voted for Donald Trump and thinking that you know that maybe he's not the right choice. Not that they disagree with some of his policies but they think that you know he's not going to back down. And by not backing down, they're afraid that's going to take us into a possible war, which you know I think everybody agrees is the next big war with a large country, somewhere like the United States or Russia or something like that or China, would turn nuclear.

LL: How surprised were you when you began to see such a big jump in sales?

GARY LYNCH: I was incredibly surprised. You know I mean I had a customer that had bought a shelter called me and they were like you know before we were worried you know that they were going to take our guns away and there was going to be civil unrest. And now you know we're thinking that maybe we might need your thing for the person we voted for.

LL: So how many projects are you currently working on?

GARY LYNCH: About 35.

LL: Give me an idea. There's a range of shelters, right? Give me an idea of what you're making.

GARY LYNCH: Oh yeah. Our range comes from a backyard mini bunker which is not a lot bigger than a tornado shelter. It's enough for two people. It's got a stove, shower, toilet, water heater, kitchen area, two bunks, food storage, an NBC infiltration system. There's just absolutely 100 per cent of the space is utilized for that. Then it goes up to you know the sky's the limit.

LL: Well, what's the most elaborate one you've made so far?

GARY LYNCH: About $14 million dollars.

LL: Fourteen million dollars?

GARY LYNCH: Mhm. It had underground stables for horses that were quite valuable. You know we've had them with swimming pools, bowling alleys, hot tubs. Hot tub is a common thing.

LL: And so who's the client for that kind of luxury bunker?

GARY LYNCH: Well, we've had politicians, Academy Award winning actors and actresses, sports figures, obviously business owners. You know some of the names that even I see sometimes and I'm going they’re buying a bunker from us? I’m like oh jeez, what do they know? You know. I don't know. It's kind of sometimes it's enlightening. Sometimes it's just downright scary.

LL: Tell me, when you say it's enlightening, what does it enlighten you to?

GARY LYNCH: Well, just that that people are aware and they're taking responsibility. Right or wrong, if you're taking responsibility and doing what you feel is right to prepare to protect yourself and your family, then you know that’s somebody who’s doing this—buying a bunker—the love of their family you know. And then the frightening part if some of the people that I see buying them that I would think would have a lot more knowledge of why they would need one than me. Of course you know when we started getting some of these people, we know who they are, we don't deal with them directly. You know we deal with project managers, et cetera, but you know we know who owns them. You know sometimes we get to talk to them and ask them these questions, sometimes we don't. But I can assure you that there is a day coming where a bunker is going to be needed.

LL: You really believe that this apocalyptic day is coming. What makes you think that?

GARY LYNCH: Well, tons of things. I mean how long is it going to be before the schoolyard bully actually go beyond just the bullying part? You know look, during the inauguration of President Trump, we had North Korea threatening us with nuclear arms. I mean how long until some nut case like that does something?

LL: Right. But the world has withstood the threat of nuclear war for many, many years and we came very close back in the 1960s with the Bay of Pigs and it didn't happen. Why is this so much worse than back then?

GARY LYNCH: Well, people have a tendency to think that nothing is going to happen because it hasn't happened. But up until the first carjacking, people would have thought well, nobody's ever going to come up to your car on a red light and get in and force you to drive them somewhere and rape you or kill you or rob you. Nobody's ever going to do that. Well, that’s because it had never happened before. But now it's an everyday common occurrence. Cars lock the doors automatically now.

LL: I guess this kind of fear is actually good for your business.

GARY LYNCH: Well, I'll be honest with you. I'll close doors today if we can fix the world where there's no need for a bunker. I'd be glad to be building dumpsters or dump truck bodies or anything else.

LL: Have you ever built a shelter for anyone in Canada?

GARY LYNCH: Well, the last one we built is about 800 square feet. It's a common bunker. You know it's got obviously a kitchen area, a couple bedrooms, things with 10 people, food storage. You know a lot of storage. Now we have done one for someone in Canada that was more elaborate—not a swimming pool or underground stable or anything—but it was about 3,000 square feet and it had, I believe it had a hot tub or a sauna option. But of course it has secret passage ways, secure doors. They built their home over the top of it. We put it in prior to their home being constructed.

LL: Is there a different demographic who are buying these shelters now or are they people that would never have thought of buying one before?

GARY LYNCH: Yes, absolutely. They’re the liberal democratic voters, people that were supporting Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

LL: And how do you know that?

GARY LYNCH: Well, they’re obvious—I mean they tell you that. Now let me tell you this. Black Friday— obviously you know what Black Friday is.

LL: Right.

GARY LYNCH: Biggest shopping holiday of the year. This was after the election. It set the record in gun sales ever for one day in the United States. Ever. It’s not because they had great sales. It’s because you had a different demographic of people buying guns. People that didn't own guns.

LL: And what explains that, do you think?

GARY LYNCH: The election. It’s people that voted against Donald Trump are going. It's just like after Obama's election. What’d you have? Record gun sales. You know it's a knee-jerk reaction.

LL: It sure sounds like you live in a nation full of fearful people.

GARY LYNCH: We live in a world full of fearful people. I've got plenty of customers in Canada. I’ve got them in South America. I've got customers in China, Sweden, Norway, Australia. It’s the entire world. It’s not the United States. This just happens to be where they're manufactured.

LL: Do you have a bunker of your own?

GARY LYNCH: Absolutely.

LL: And what style do you have?

GARY LYNCH: I’m more basic. You know I don't have a swimming pool or bowling alley, you know things like that. But you know I don't swim much and I definitely don't bowl. You know I don't have any horses so I don’t need an underground stable. But what I've got: I’ve got a large media room. I've got a gymnasium for documents to work out in. Obviously plenty of sleeping area, food storage, weapons storage because I collect guns. So I’ve got a lot of things like that in mine.

LL: Well, I hope that you never need to use it.

GARY LYNCH: I do too.

LL: Thank you very much.

GARY LYNCH: Thank you.

LL: Gary Lynch—no relation—is the co-owner of Rising S Bunkers. He was in Murchison, Texas. And while some prepare for the possibility of nuclear war, others say there is no safe shelter once nuclear missiles start to fly. Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He's also the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It's Too Late and we've reached him in Washington, DC. Hello.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Good morning.

LL: What do you think of this idea of a bomb shelter as a way to survive a nuclear war?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Well, I understand why there's an upsurge in people looking for how to survive the apocalypse some are calling a “Trumpocalypse”. But a fallout shelter doesn't do you much good unless you're not in a city. If you're in a city, your fallout shelter and all your carefully stored supplies will be obliterated along with everything else if the city is hit by a nuclear bomb. It does make some sense if you're out in the far suburbs or out in the prairie where you're less likely to be the direct target of a nuclear bomb. So let's say your prime minister doesn't get along with our president and things get pretty testy. And the United States decides to launch one nuclear weapon on Toronto and they're targeting your station in Toronto.

LL: Thanks a lot. Okay.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: There's a wonderful map. You can do this yourself. It's called, you look up “NUKEMAP” and you can put in the bomb size and pick the target yourself and see what would happen. So I picked your radio station in Toronto and mapped this out. One warhead from just one of our submarine launch ballistic missiles, it’s about 450 kilotonnes of explosive yield. That's 450,000 tonnes of explosives. That's about 30 times the size of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. You, you're in the crater. You're completely gone. You’re vapourized immediately and everything out to a diameter of about 10 kilometres is rubble, is completely blasted out. So a 10 kilometre circle rubble. If you're out on a 20 kilometre diameter circle, you are in flames. There's a major firestorm that engulfs you and you really have to go about 20 miles, 20 kilometres away from the center of the blast—so 40 kilometre diameter— to really escape the fires and thermal radiation that you get. So if you're in the suburb of Richmond Hill for example or if you’re up further away up in Ottawa, you don't feel the blast. You're okay. But you'll probably still get a plume of radiation that will hit Ottawa, hit Montreal or for that matter, Pittsburgh, Columbus, even as far away as New York City depending on which way the wind is blowing. If you're in a fallout shelter there, it actually will help you. If you could just stay in that fallout shelter and avoid the radiation for two or three days, you could probably emerge. Two or three weeks would be better. But still, Toronto would be uninhabitable. You could not live in Toronto for many more years because the radiation in the soil and the water would stay around that long and be poisonous to all life there.

LL: I find it bizarre, to be honest, that we're even having this discussion. I thought these kinds of fears were more or less put to bed a long time ago. Do you think it's even valid to be talking about this?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: So I'm in the nuclear business. I've been doing nuclear strategy here in Washington, DC for about 35 years. And every once in a while, you do get scares. Real scares. I mean you remember the anti—maybe you don't—the anti-nuclear weapons movements of the 1980s. People really thought we were going to war. They were making movies about this. There was a reasonable fear that the superpowers could go to war. You see it come and go every now and then. We've never had a moment like this where it's not really a question of tensions between the two nuclear-armed states. We're talking Russia and the United States. These two countries have about 95 per cent of all the nuclear weapons in the world. Each has somewhere around 5,000 weapons in their active stockpile, four to five thousand. Each one of them is enough to destroy human civilization several times over. So that it's not that the tensions are so bad that there's a crisis over Berlin or in the Taiwan Straits. It's the presence of Donald Trump as president of the United States. We've rarely had a president this sort of unstable, this temperamental, this impetuous, this man who is deeply ignorant of nuclear policy and nuclear facts of life and worse, doesn't actually understand that he's ignorant about them. And it's that fear that's generating the current, I think, interest in fallout shelters. The current feeling that the political structures in the United States are in danger, may be collapsing and we could either intentionally or unintentionally slip into an apocalyptic scenario.

LL: So let's call this the fear economy. Apart from the bomb shelter makers, what other industries can capitalize on this?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Oh, right. Well, you see this in the defense industry all the time. I mean the defense industry lives on threat. So it's in the interest of Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or Boeing, et cetera, to emphasize the threat and then emphasize that they have a weapon that can answer that threat. So I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years. I mean that's how we started our annual budget considerations, with the threat. So you see that a lot. So the defense industry by far has that. The gun industry has an interest in this on a personal level—the threat of crime, the threat of instability, the threat of home invasion. You should buy guns to defend yourself. So gun sales have spiked.

LL: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently moved its Doomsday Clock to two and a half minutes to midnight. I understand that may partly be Trump but it's also other things, isn't it?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Yes, it is. The scientists—and I know that the board that sets the clock takes this very seriously. This is not a cheap publicity stunt. This is their honest appraisal of how close we are to a planetary threat. And they now count and have for the last 10 years or so, climate change. What's happening to climate change? They take into account some biothreats, in other words these threats that have planetary catastrophic consequences. But still, it's heavily weighted towards nuclear and they're worried that the arms control efforts that have worked over the past several decades that have reduced the number of nuclear weapons in the world—steadily reduced the number of countries with these—are now static. And we may be going in the other way. We may be on the verge of a new arms race. Every country that has nuclear weapons in the world—there are nine of them—is modernizing or building new nuclear weapons to some extent, with the US and Russia leading the way. That's what they're worried about.

LL: So okay. In your estimation then, how likely is nuclear war?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: It's increased. I agree with the scientists. We are at more risk now than we were a year ago. Either because of tensions in a region, South Asia—there was a shooting war that goes on every day over the Kashmir border between India and Pakistan. Both of those countries have about 120 nuclear weapons. A provocation like North Korea—North Korea only has a few nuclear weapons, may not even have weaponized them—but the United States is sitting there with hundreds of weapons designated for targets on the Korean Peninsula. A mistake, a provocation leads to a shooting war or a shooting incident. Take the Persian Gulf. Again, not really. Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons but tensions between the US and Iran are escalating a war there. There are some who have advocated for some time that the US use a nuclear weapon in the Middle East. A demonstration shot against Iran. A shot against ISIS. So these risks are real and they're there and of course you always have the threat of an accident or a miscalculation or an impetuous president summoning that officer who follows him seven days a week, 24 hours a day with the briefcase with the nuclear codes. The president of the United States says he wants to use a nuclear weapon, it is his decision, his decision alone. Once he gives the order, within four minutes missiles are flying and no one can stop him.

LL: So what advice would you give to people who are planning on ways to survive a nuclear war?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Give money to people who are trying to eliminate nuclear weapons. That's what I would tell them. You know most of us live in metropolitan areas. I'm telling you. Fallout shelters are useless. I did the drills as a kid. I went down to the cellar of my school. Every month we had a drill. They were useless if you're living in an urban area. If you're out in the farmland, you're out in the prairie, okay. Maybe you should be stockpiling some things. But I would say that the key to preventing your destruction by nuclear weapons, the key to surviving a nuclear war is to stop the nuclear war from happening in the first place. As Nikita Khrushchev said decades ago, after a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead. Stop the thing from happening in the first place.

LL: Thank you for a very sobering discussion.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Yeah. Good morning to you too.

LL: Bye-bye.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: Bye-bye.

LL: Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and is the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late. He was in Washington, DC.

SOUNDCLIP

If you are at home, go to the basement or the strongest part of your house or building. Take your battery radio with you or turn up a house radio so that you can hear it while undercover. Stay away from windows. Lie down and protect yourself from flying glass and falling debris. Shield your eyes from the flash of an explosion. Listen to your radio for further instruction.

LL: That is a Canadian emergency broadcast that was to be played on Edmonton airwaves in the event of a nuclear attack and it comes courtesy of the Canadian Civil Defense Museum Association. To get a better understanding of the origins of civil defense in Canada, I'm joined by Fred Armbruster. He is the executive director of the Canadian Civil Defense Museum Association and we have reached him in Edmonton. Hello.

FRED ARMBRUSTER: Hello.

LL: You have been listening in to our last guest. What did you think of what you just heard?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: Well, when it comes to protection and that, of course politics are involved. But to point fingers at any one source saying that this is the cause of heightened tension is not necessarily fair. As great tensions globally have been excelling over the years, you know for example North Korea and the terror attacks and so on and so forth. So just for someone that's been inaugurated in the past few weeks to say that it's all their fault is premature in my opinion.

LL: Let's talk a little bit about the beginnings of civil defense in Canada. You know the history here. That archival tape we heard earlier came from your organization. Where was that discovered?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: That actually came out of the Penhold bunker before it was decommissioned and demolished.

LL: So tell me a little bit about the Penhold bunker.

FRED ARMBRUSTER: The bunker was a provincial bunker under the guidance of Diefenbaker, hence it's coined called the Diefenbunker. There was a bunker in each province across Canada. These bunkers measured approximately in 67 cells in square feet and were accompanied by two communication bunkers that average approximately 17,000 square feet.

LL: And how were the bunkers supposed to be used?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: The bunkers were used as basically the fallout shelter. They wouldn't have sustained a direct hit. So in the case of an emergency or if they were alerted, the federal government would have went to the Penhold bunker and stayed tight until it was deemed safe. If there was heightened tension, they would have already been there. It's not like there's a missile coming, let’s dispatch to the Penhold bunker. There would be a provision for that in place because you would know that something's happening.

LL: And how did the bunker building and our approach to civil defense in Canada differ from the United States?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: The civil defense bunker system in Canada actually is the same as it was in the United States. For example, in 1952, Edmonton built two bunkers under the civil defense direction. One was municipal to direct the city of Edmonton if something should happen. The second bunker was the provincial headquarters. So civil defense operated on three different levels. It went federal, provincial and municipal.

LL: Okay. Does Canada still have an “official” nuclear bunkers still in operation. Still viable?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: No. Not to public knowledge anyhow. And all nuclear bunkers that were built in the sixties have all been decommissioned.

LL: And what about the ones you were talking about in Edmonton? What happened to them?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: The Edmonton bunker was abandoned in 1979 approximately and the provincial bunker was sold off to a private entity and now is used for the school board.

LL: Really? A school board operates out of there? Are they using the downstairs quarters at all?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: I'm not exactly sure what's down there but I believe there is a board room down there.

LL: Okay. In light of everything we've been discussing, would you like to see nuclear preparedness programs and bunkers revived in Canada?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: Absolutely. There should be a course out there, a source of educating people and helping them to be prepared for a manmade or natural disaster of any type.

LL: Well, let me just put this to you because I put it to others here. What if someone says to you this is an overreaction? That we're not that close to having any kind of a nuclear attack?

FRED ARMBRUSTER: How do we know if it is or is not is my question posed to that. Because if everyone has arms and there is great global tension, this is the most dangerous time in history because everyone has nuclear warheads.

LL: Well, we will leave it on that ominous note, Fred Armbruster. Thank you.

FRED ARMBRUSTER: You're welcome. Have yourself a a great day.

LL: Fred Armbruster is the executive director of the Canadian Civil Defense Museum Association in Edmonton. As you just heard, nervous times are good financial news for companies who are selling bomb shelters. In 1964 super power rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union meant nuclear war could have broken out at any time. Stanley Kubrick directed one of the darkest satires about atomic destruction to come out of the Cold War and here from the 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, is Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove with kind of a creepy description of life in a mine shaft after nuclear Armageddon.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.

VOICE 2: That would not be necessary, Mr. President. You could easily get accomplished with a computer and the computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty years.

LL: Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove from the 1964 movie of the same name. Well, that is it for our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q and remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's going to let you browse through past episodes of the show, start listening in just a few seconds. You can search for stories you missed or you want to hear again or listen live to your local CBC station right from your smartphone or tablet. And you can also make your own playlist of your favorite shows to listen to later. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. Well, as you heard earlier there has been a lot of intrigue surrounding North Korea's ruling family. Even though it is a closed society with a high execution rate, that doesn't mean they don't make music. Here is North Korea's Chongbong Band playing “Oh! Susanna”. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: “Oh! Susanna” sung by Chongbong Band]

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February 15, 2017 full episode transcript

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