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The AIH Transcript for March 9, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight:

CO: The official opposition. Liberals in a Montreal riding reject the candidate the party wanted, and nominate a virtual unknown instead -- and the local mayor, who was shut out of the race, says resentment fueled the rebellion.

JD: Making a federal case of it. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister wants Ottawa to take action to stem the flow of refugees entering illegally from the United States -- but he won't say what action.

CO: They can get mad -- but they have to get even. Iceland is set to become the first and only country in the world to require companies to prove they're providing their employees equal pay for equal work.

JD: It just came to them out of the blue. Well, that's oversimplifying things -- because in fact, scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum found the process of reducing a dead blue whale to its skeleton both painstaking and putrid.

CO: I'm sure it made her angry -- but she composed herself. Funny thing: the "F. Mendelssohn" who fashioned the fantastic "Easter Sonata" was not the famous Felix, but his frequently forgotten sister, Fanny.

JD: And... he kept a stiff upper lip. Unfortunately, his lower lip was pretty pliable. Which is how, after a dramatic accident, a Wyoming ski instructor wound up with a tree branch stuck through that lip, and out of his mouth.
As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that hates being unprepared for an oral presentation.

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Part 1: Liberal riding: DeSousa, Iceland equal pay, lip branch skier

Liberal riding DeSousa

Guest: Alan DeSousa

JEFF DOUGLAS: Almost no one expected to win the Liberal nomination in a Montreal riding last night. Not even Ms. Lambropoulos. She said so herself after her upset victory. Here is a bit more of what she had to say:

SOUNDCLIP

EMMANUELLA LAMBROPOULOS: Thank you all so much for the support. I really, really, really appreciate it. I have no words.

JD: The 26-year-old teacher beat out the Liberal Party's favoured candidate, a former provincial cabinet minister.
Some people in the riding believe the vote was a revolt by local party members against the federal leadership. One of those voicing that opinion is a long-time local mayor who was barred from contest by the Liberals.
Alan DeSousa is the mayor of Saint-Laurent. We reached him in Montreal.

CAROL OFF: Mr. DeSouza, why do you think that Emmanuella Lambropoulos won the nomination last night?

ALAN DESOUSA: Well it was viewed, the rejection of my name on the ballot was viewed by the people in the community as being not a good thing for democracy. They felt that the parties preferred candidate was being forced on them. There was a lot of anger, a lot of grief, a lot of fury in the community and they were looking how could they express themselves. And other candidates who lived in the community was the only candidate that lived in the community was on there and people migrated to be able to send a strong message to the Liberal Party that they were not willing to have parachuted candidates shoved down their throats. They wanted to have a say as to who would represent them and they were not going to accept this manner of dealing whereby through backroom deals that may have been appropriate in the 50s but were no longer appropriate in 2017.

CAROL OFF: You've actually taken a few steps back from that as well and you've said that you think that people were in their writings they were angry because Stephane Dion losing their writing or resigning from that and that he felt he was treated unfairly by the party. What do you mean by that?

AD: Well let's put things in perspective. Stephane Dion has been our Member of Parliament over 21 years. Stephane Dion has served his country well in fighting for national unity and fighting for the environment. He was a former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. And notwithstanding the Prime Minister has a prerogative to name his Cabinet people felt that Stephane was not treated with respect and the elegance that perhaps should have been accorded to him as a former leader of the party. So that seemed to be the first slap in the face to the residents of Saint-Laurent.
But then further to that when their own mayor who has served them for over 16 years’ candidacy was rejected without any explanation whatsoever, to them it seemed to double the injury. And that obviously was like a pot on the stove that's boiling. At some point in time, the lid is going to blow. Well that voice that hearing was expressed and people rebelled.

CO: You are as you just mentioned how you were rejected by the party, your candidacy. You were regarded as the front runner, had you been able to run. The Green Light Committee was the body within the Liberal Party that told you that you couldn't run. Were you ever given an explanation as to why you were rejected?

AD: No at no point in time was any explanation forthcoming. And even today nothing has been made known to me privately or publicly. I must say that I complied with all the requirements of the party in terms of providing police reports, credit reports, and you name it to make sure that things are clear. I've served 31 years in public life. There are no skeletons in my closet. In fact, if there are any skeletons, they're probably dead from hunger. Because there ain't any there. And my name, my reputation, my achievements, things I've done in the community are well-known, and my life is in the public domain. So I didn't feel that I had anything to be reproached for there were no ethical lapses that I'm aware of. And so I felt that I was a good candidate.

CO: But you know that, I mean there is a big stink around municipal politics in Quebec and in Montreal, and that you were not involved with that. But you did work closely with people who are caught up in corruption scandals. Did you hear anything from the Liberals as to whether or not they thought that, even though you weren't part of the stink, that the smell was around in that may have been a factor?

AD: Well look, if that's the test, then many people will fail the test because I've always worked in the best interests of the community. Look, Ralph Goodale’s office was raided and today he's the public security minister. Ms. James was one of the candidates sat around the table like Tony Tomassi and Nathalie Normandeau who were charged. So I don't think that can be a test. I think clearly if there's something wrong, if there's something concrete, we need to put it on the table and deal with it head on rather than whispering it to a whisper campaign and maligning people's reputations.
I stand and I have stood with dignity in public life and I've served the community well.

CO: You say that you resent that Yolande James was parachuted in. That's the candidate that the rules the Federal Liberal Party wanted to run in the riding to win the riding. But in the end, someone they didn't say they wanted or didn't parachute in, Ms. Lambropoulos, she won. So doesn't it show that the system is working? That the Liberals had a preferred candidate but the people in the riding in Saint Laurent actually got to have the last say it.

AD: I had no resentment for Ms. James. I just wanted it to be a fair and open democratic process.

CO: But it was in the end, wasn't it? Because Ms. Lambropoulos won?

AD: Let's be very clear. By not putting my name on the ballot, not allowing people the opportunity to vote for me, I think not only did they take me out of the game, they didn't put a thumb on the scales, they put an elephant on the scales. And clearly when you do that to the detriment of strong candidates, then you will have things happen. And in this case you do have people who will react in a negative manner. So I think we're running a race where you've got all people having an equal chance and let's do it that way. If you want to name a candidate, as had been done in the past, then assume the responsibility for it and say so, that you're going to name people. But if you're going to talk about an open race, you can't have a hybrid.
What happened yesterday was probably more the exception than the rule. In other nomination cases, as you may have seen, in places like Markham and else, other tactics were used to ensure that the preferred candidate made it through.

CO: If this is the situation just for Liberals in this riding, that they were angry with the federal party for how it handled things, how do you think this will play out in the actual by-election. Do you think that it's possible? This is a very strong Liberal riding. Do you think that the electorate itself might punish the party?

AD: Well I think we'll have to wait and see. I don't think of a crystal ball. I don’t think I have a crystal ball. I do know that what I saw last night sent a message to the powers that be. Will they learn from those experiences? How will the other parties who are each chasing leadership race react to it? I think there are going to be many factors that determine how this election, by-election, plays out. And also what will come down the pipe in the future.
For the time being, I think I'm just thankful that people in the community are not willing to be taken for granted. Not willing to be taken for stupid, and will not follow as willful sheep but actually take the time to go and vote and express their opinions. And if it does rock the boat a bit, well so be it.

CO: Alright. We will be watching Mr. DeSousa, thank you.

AD: Thank you very much.

JD: Alan DeSousa is the mayor of the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. He was barred by the Liberal Party from running for the nomination for an upcoming by-election there. We requested an interview with the winner, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, but she was not available today.

[Music]

Iceland equal pay

Guest: Thordis Loa

JD: It's nice to talk about equality. But in Iceland, companies are going to have to prove they've put their money where their mouths are. Iceland is set to become the first country in the world to force companies to provide proof that they're paying all their employees the same amount for the same work -- regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality. Iceland's Social Affairs and Equality Minister made the announcement yesterday, on International Women's Day, saying, "The time is right to do something radical about this issue."
Thordis Loa is the CEO of the tourism company Gray Line Iceland. We reached Ms. Loa in Reykjavik.

CO: Ms. Loa, as you know, Iceland is already well ahead of the pack in its laws for women in the workforce. Why is this law necessary?

THORDIS LOA: We have had the law of equal pay for many years, but we have not really seen any good progress in equal pay for decades now. So I think it's time that we take this action and I think people here, at least women, are very satisfied that we are going to be making some strong programs for real.

CO: I understand how it works, is that employers who have more than 25 people on their staff will need to obtain certification to prove that they are providing equal pay for work of equal value for men and women.

TL: Yes I believe that will be how it will be done. But they will start with the larger companies and then step by step, make that real for the smaller companies as well.

CO: Your country is well ahead of others in trying to equalize men and women. And it's all evolving in that direction more and more including that the pay is improving. Why not just let this evolve naturally with the laws already there? Why push this one step further?

TL: Because we've been pushing this systematically since 1975 and we've seen indication of change but very slow. And we think, if we really want to make a social change, we need strong actions because otherwise we would be waiting for decades. And I think this mentality is also maybe a little bit the reason why Iceland is number one when it comes to gender equality because there is no tolerance for just waiting and waiting and waiting.

CO: You say that this has been a fight since 1975 and in general that's for many countries, it's been about that time that there's been these demands, these measures, protests, agitation for it. How did it go in Iceland? Why do you think that Iceland did end up doing so much better for women over these decades?

TL: I think in a way, or at least I hope that there’s been a consensus in between the people of Iceland to make this a good society for all. And the legislation and steps we’ve been taking for the last 30 years, they've all been towards equality in the work force, equality in society. And so we have taken lots of measures when it comes to care of children, and schooling and health, to make sure that both genders have to have the same possibility. So I think it's a little bit about how we as a nation want to become a better world for both genders.

CO: It's interesting to just flip the coin over I guess, and that's the… just been talking about the world recognizes Iceland as being so advanced and that 80 percent of Icelandic women are in the workforce. There's mandatory quotas for board members, companies, universities, students, all kinds of things, but at the same time, 22 percent of managers are women. Only 30 percent of experts on TV are women. And women earn 14 percent less than men. So even with all the things that Iceland has done, the question is why is there still this gap?

TL: Because we haven't we're not there yet. And it shows you exactly these numbers shows us that this is the reason why we need to take those steps. Why we need to keep on doing this all the way. And it's going to take time. It's going to take a lot of time. But if we just wait, nothing will happen at least not very fast. But when it comes to for example to diversity on boards, because we wanted that to happen quite naturally, but nothing really happened. Even though associations within business and the Chamber of Commerce and more associations signed the contract that we want to do this naturally, for a long time nothing happened. So we need to push things with legislation with quotas for something to happen and then slowly the mentality changes. I sure hope that in 25, 30 years we will have more equal percentage when it comes to management of the country and politics also and the businesses. And in all spectrums of society. But we're definitely not there yet. And even though we are in first place, we are way, far away from where we want to be in upcoming years.

CO: I know you're a business woman, you're not legislators. So this is probably a better question for the lawmakers in your country, but can you tell us a bit about how the law will work. I mean what happens if a company, either public or private, because they're both in this, what if there is a discrepancy in wages between men and women. How will the government deal with that?

TL: I don't know yet and I haven't I haven't heard anything about what will be the consequences if we don't do this. The minister just announced this program. So we don't really have the final outcome of what the consequences will be. But according to him, if we learn a little bit from the protests we have on board we see that the companies that fall under that quota. They do apply to the quota. So they are working with the legislation. And Iceland is a small country when it comes to this as well. So you can't really hide in the crowd doing the wrong thing. You will soon stand out.
And you know as a business person you don't want to stand out for things like this, you want to stand out for your excellence but not for something that you're not doing.

CO: And do you know if companies are going to push back at all on this? I mean some who are saying this is an added layer of bureaucracy. They are already moving the direction of treating women more fairly. Is there pushback?

TL: We have to see but I'm sure not all businesses are very happy with this. But there are a lot of businesses that say yes we're ready, let's do this. But there will be a lot of discussion on this in Iceland and it's going to be exciting how this also evolves because at least as far as my knowledge is, we are far away from knowing exactly how this is going to be done. So I think we are much more seeing today the vision we are going there, we're going to do it like this, but exactly how it's going to end up, we don't really know yet.

CO: Well a lot of countries will be watching how it goes. And it's good to talk to you, Ms. Loa. Thank you.

TL: Thank you.

JDL: Thordis Loa is the CEO of the tourism company Gray Line Iceland, and the president of The Icelandic Association of Women Business Leaders. We reached her in Reykjavik. You can see more on that story by visiting our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Beyak

JD: Lynn Beyak may be able to see the good where others cannot. But her comments have prompted cries of dismay from survivors of Canada's residential schools.
Ms. Beyak is a Conservative Senator. On Tuesday she rose in the chamber to say this.

SOUNDCLIP

LYNN BEYAK: I speak partly for the record but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants, perhaps some of us here in this chamber, whose remarkable works, good deeds, and historical tales and the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports. Obviously negative issues must be addressed. But it's unfortunate that they are sometimes magnified and considered more newsworthy than the abundance of good.

JD: That was conservative senator Lynn Beyak addressing the chamber on Tuesday night. NDP MP MP Romeo Saganash is himself a survivor of residential schools. Here's what he said about the Senator's comments earlier today.

SOUNDCLIP

ROMEO SAGANASH: I think she should at least apologize, read the Truth and Reconciliation report and all the 94 calls to action. And I think I would even say to that extent, resign because after we're in the era of reconciliation now, after the report in 94 calls to action. I don't think we need people like that in these two institutions on the Hill. As a survivor of residential schools, she’s gone too far for me. I don't think any survivor of residential schools, there are so many in this country, accepts that kind of comment. So I think she should resign because we don't need those kind of people either in Parliament or in the Senate. Obviously she didn't live the residential schools for sure. She definitely wasn't a parent of any of those kids, because you know every fall, all of the villages would be emptied of their children. So obviously she’s insensitive, ignorant, and totally inacceptable comments. And that's why she needs to resign, I believe, because we cannot have people around these two places saying those kinds of things. I thought we had passed the stage of the report and the storytelling behind residential schools. And we have the report, we have the 94 calls to action. It's time to move on not go back to those terrible things.

JD: That was NDP member of parliament and residential school Survivor Romeo Saganash speaking to reporters earlier today.

[Music]

Lip branch skiier

Guest: Natty Hagood

JD: If you're looking to pierce your lip and you’re looking for an unconventional way to do it, Natty Hagood has a tip for you. Literally. It's not painless, but it is impressively extreme. Earlier this month, the Wyoming ski instructor had a run that didn't end so well. One that left him, and a tree branch, down in the mouth.
We reached Natty Hagood in Jackson, Wyoming.

CO: Natty, how are you feeling.

NATTY HAGOOD: I'm good. I'm good.

CO: Can you tell us what you were doing just before you had this encounter with a tree branch?

NH: Yeah I would say five minutes prior, I was riding up the chairlift with my roommate and a new friend from out of town and we decided to ski underneath the chairlift. Moments before this incident with the tree branch, I was skiing down the side of a run called Tower Three. I spotted a gap between two trees, saw that that was going to be my exit back to the chair line and shot between the two trees. And I don't know if it was my vantage point because the run is rather steep and not being able to see the thick branch in the middle. I think a lot of what is happening this year and what happened to me, is that we have so much snow this year, we have such a big snow pack, we’re 530 inches for the year. We're skiing higher off the ground than we normally are. We probably have about 10 feet of snow on the ground so all those branches you know have been clipped and broken off from years of skiing in between the trees. But now of the snow is so much higher, I think we’re running into thicker, sturdier, more aggressive branches.

CO: And so you were moving pretty quickly when you met this tree branch and what did it do to you?

NH: It initially knocked me off my feet and I couldn't tell what had happened. I sort of felt something was amiss with my jaw and I didn't know if I'd broken my jaw. I knew my face felt weird and so I kind of like moved my jaw and like moved my tongue out of my mouth, and that all felt OK. And then it felt almost as if my chin chinstrap to my helmet head like rested on my lip. So I went to brush the chinstrap back down and noticed then that there was a protrusion from my lip. And at that point I saw my roommate coming down the slope behind me so I turned my head to the left to look to see him and as I did that, I saw the stick tracking in my periphery to my right. And at that moment I realized that I had this impaled object in my face so I reached out and kind of grasped the stick and wiggled it a little bit and realized it was rather soundly affixed in my face.

CO: I'm laughing only because the way you're describing it sounds awful. How big was the stick that was impaled in your lip?

NH: I was laughing too, to be honest. Like once I took stock of my situation and realized that I wasn't seriously injured, like I'm trained as an EMT and as a wilderness first responder, and so I knew that what I had was merely a flesh wound. My teeth weren’t broken, I wasn't bleeding. So I started laughing too. I started cracking jokes almost immediately. I said to Pete you know, “Hey look, I got a new piercing.”
You know so the branch itself, the part that went through my lip, is probably about the diameter of a pinky finger, maybe a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller depending on the person's finger. The section right where it like stops, like right where you see it coming out of my face, there’s actually a knuckle there where the branch gets quite considerably bigger and covered in bark. So the piece that looks, it looks as if the thing going into my face is like the size of a silver dollar even though it's probably about the size of a dime. And it was probably a foot and a half long, maybe two feet long. So yeah I realized that they weren't going to be able to brace the branch.

CO: They wanted to brace it for transporting you?

NH: Exactly, exactly. So you know anytime you have an impaled object, you never want to remove it in a back injury setting. You always want to let a doctor do that, where you have what they sa, bright lights and cold steel you know, so you never just pull an object like this out but you don't want it to create further damage. So I initially told the patrol that I just wanted to ski down. I was like “No, I’m fine guys, like I’m just going to ski down” like I don't want to create a big fuss. And they were like “No we're going to take you down on a sled, like if you fall, this thing's going to like rip out of your face.”

CO: How did they stabilize it then?

NH: So when it was about a foot and a half long I thought that was too long, like there were going to be able to stabilize it and put me in a sled, like I knew that just wasn't going to work. So I grasped the branch with my left hand and braced that left hand against my cheek, kind of pressed it firmly against my face so that there wasn't any movement in the stick. And then I use my right hand to snap the end of the stick off. So I broke it down to probably about six inches. So it was broken twice. Once when I hit the tree, and then a second time when we were sitting there preparing me transport.
So then once I broke it, patrol kind of exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, you're crazy. What are you doing? Quit moving. Let us do this thing.” And so they kind of like, they braced the back of the stick with a roll of gauze and they just kind of wrapped gauze around my head and helmet to try to keep it from wiggling around.

CO: How many stitches did you get?

NH: I believe it was about 12. A couple of my supervisors from the ski school for the mountain sports school came down and were like “Oh my goodness, Natty, are you ok?” [b] I'm like, “Yeah, I'm good. You know just you know, stick in my face, cracking jokes, you know, whatever it's all good. Then I think what’s kind of hilarious is that’s sort of the vibe and the story a lot of people have picked up on. You know, one of the titles was “Skier bro extremely chill about getting stick through his face” and you know like I said, as soon as I recognized that it wasn't a life threatening injury, and wasn't a serious injury, I thought it was extremely novel.

CO: And you've got a few nicknames out of it didn't you?

NH: Yeah. Lipstick, sticky. Tresus Christ. I think Treesus Christ might be my favorite.

CO: So you're completely back to normal and hitting the slopes when you can?

NH: Well I wouldn't really classify myself as normal, but yeah back to where I was.

CO: I'm glad to hear that Natty, it is good to talk to you. Thanks.

NH: Yeah of course.

CO: Bye-bye.

JD: Natty Hagood is a ski instructor in Jackson, Wyoming, and that's where we reached him. And if you want to see a photo of Mr. Hagood with a branch through his lip -- and only you know if that is something you want to see – it is our website. I suggest you wait till after dinner: cbc.ca/aih.

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Part 2: Brian Pallister on border, Fanny Mendelssohn discovery

Brian Pallister on border

Guest: Brian Pallister

JEFF DOUGLAS: Brian Pallister is calling on Ottawa to take action to address the flow of refugees crossing illegally into Canada from the United States. The Manitoba Premier made the appeal today after 19 people braved minus 30 degree temperatures to make the track near the town of Emerson in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. We're going to speak to Premier Pallister in a moment. First though here is Ted Falk the Conservative MP for the Emerson area from a video he posted over the weekend.

SOUNDCLIP

TED FALK: Prime Minister I'm standing here in Emerson, Manitoba right on the border. And as the media have reported around the world, your message of welcome to Canada to refugees. Is this an open invitation for folks that want to illegally cross into Canada to come here and take advantage of our generous immigration and refugee policy. It appears that people have understood your comments to mean exactly that. Come to Canada, come in any way you want. Legally, illegally, it doesn't seem to matter. It seems as though your statement has created a great deal of confusion and on behalf of my constituents, I would like you to set the record straight. Mr. Prime Minister, if you approve of these crossings, please tell the Canadian people that border integrity and border security is not an issue that's important to you. But if you oppose these illegal entries. Then let Canadians know that you're going to close the loophole that is allowing for folks to come across the border here illegally and abuse our pretty generous immigration and refugee policies.

JD: That was Manitoba Conservative MP Ted Falk speaking in a video he posted over the weekend. Brian Pallister is the Premier of Manitoba. We reached him in Winnipeg.

CO: Premier Pallister, we just heard Ted Falk blaming Justin Trudeau for what he sees as people taking advantage of Canada's generosity. How do you respond to Ted Falk?

BRIAN PALLISTER: Well I'm announcing today an ask for the Prime Minister to actually assist Manitoba in continuing to be the home of hope. We've led the country for quite a few years in terms of refugees coming here. We're a province that was founded like much of Canada by refugees. Their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren inhabit this country, and I take personal pride in the reputation that Manitoba and Canada have.
The reality is the Manitoba situation is a very challenging one right now as you know, just because of the influx from south to north of so many new people. And it's very dangerous situation that needs to be addressed in partnership with the federal government. So that was our, essentially our announcement today, and our ask today, that we function as a country should, and that we work together effectively to protect all of us and to protect those who are desperately trying to come here to find a new home.

CO: Then do you disagree with the premise of Mr. Falk that people who are crossing into Manitoba and Quebec are taking advantage of Canada's generosity?

BP: Well I take a somewhat different approach, I suppose in one respect. I know that for example this week, we saw 20 men, women and children, including a woman who was pregnant, so desperate that they crossed some great distance of fields in a blizzard which had wind chills of minus 30 and more. Now I don't think that there's anything but sheer desperation that would drive people to those lengths. And what I'm concerned about here, is that we respect the reality that this is putting a tremendous burden on local people, on frontline services, on communities on the resources of Manitoba and also putting people at risk.

CO: OK. I don't entirely understand what you want that this partnership for the federal government to do because what we're looking at here is that people are coming over because they're afraid of being deported back to Somalia, where we know there's a famine and there's a war. They don't want to go back there. At the same time the coming over the border in the way they are because of the Safe Third Country Agreement, which means that if they go to the border crossing, they'll be sent back. And so they're doing that for that reason. So what this is what Mr. Falk’s talking about, that he calls them loopholes. What should the federal government do, not just with generosity and helping people once they get here, you say it is dangerous. What should be done to prevent them from coming across?

BP: Well let's put the responsibility where they belong. The federal government has a responsibility to deal with border issues. I respect that they have that responsibility, and I'm sure Mr. Falk as a Federal Member of Parliament will have suggestions for the federal government on how they deal with that issue. I'm the premier of a province which is faced with millions of dollars of additional costs, a resource burden that is imposed almost entirely on us here in Manitoba, where we've already taken the lead for example in respect of government sponsored refugees. And so our burden is large we've willingly accepted it. But we're asking the federal government to work in partnership with us on things like health care coverage, temporary and longer term housing, employment income assistance, direct employment and labor market support including language training, which was recently cut by the federal government, legal aid assistance, child protection. We have minors coming here with no family. These are real issues. They require real resource support and they are being put entirely on our province.

CO: OK but you’re not answering the question. This is not about the resources you need to help people once they arrive. What you said is it’s dangerous for them to make this cross.

BP: [Crosstalk] But it is to me Carol. You’re asking me a question about federal government jurisdictional issues and I'm answering the question as a premier who is faced with the reality of dealing with the situation. You're asking me how to deal with the root causes of this issue and I'm making the ask that the prime minister speak to the president of the United States and make sure that they're doing everything in their power, A, to make people aware from Djibouti and Somalia that they shouldn't be coming across during a spring flood and putting their lives and the lives of others at risk. And B, to address the root causes of the loss of hope that people are experiencing and the fear and uncertainty they're experiencing that is driving them to our beautiful country.

CO: What you're saying is that you have to turn this over to Washington. But the question is that, there is not a mood in Washington right now, in the White House that says that they're going to try and do anything to keep people from, or make them feel as though they can stay in the United States. So that in that atmosphere, what do you suggest. I know what you are saying that you have your jurisdiction is to take care of them once they arrive. But what do you want Ottawa to do to see that people don't put themselves in danger crossing the border?

BP: Well a couple of things Carol. I think that's a fair preamble because the reality of the situation is that people are coming here out of desperation and fear. Those are important issues to address. So all the more reason is that we see the consequences of this fear and this desperation firsthand as we have local people going out into fields in the middle of a blizzard trying to help people who are poorly clothed, who have already as a consequence of the risks they've taken, had fingers amputated. We have two year old children coming across, when the visibility, Carol, honest to gosh, you couldn't see across a room. And yet people still come.
What concerns me is as spring approaches there's the flood potential, which is very real. Secondly of course, the larger issue is the ongoing challenge we have. A growing number of people, as the weather warms up, may well want to come. We anticipate right now conservatively in our small province, we anticipate another thousand people coming to Manitoba through this mechanism this year alone. That's a significant additional burden on our resources at a time when we are very desperately trying to get ourselves into a better fiscal situation to offer services to everyone else in our province as well.
And I'm not banging a tin cup here, I'm just saying we need our country to work to help these people find a new country. We need to respect the people who are here, many of whom have come as refugees in the last few years, where their resources, the resources that we can make available to them, may well be diminished as a consequence of the additional influxes we're experiencing. I don't want to see that happen and I'm asking the federal government to step up and do its part.

CO: Premier Pallister, thank you for your time.

BP: Thanks Carol.

CO: Bye-bye.

JD: Brian Pallister is the Premier of Manitoba. We reached him in Winnipeg.

[Music]

ACA repeal

JD: He may be an unlikely champion for women who frequent tanning salons. But durned if they’re being taxed does not have Missouri Congressman Jason Smith extremely hot under the collar.
Yesterday, the US House Ways and Means Committee, charged with overseeing taxation, met to discuss the GOP's repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And Congressman Smith took the opportunity to raise what he sees as a grave injustice against women, one he only became aware of after he grew curious about how exactly tanning bed patrons are taxed.
As he explained to the committee, that simple question spurred him to conduct some extensive research.

SOUNDCLIP

JASON SMITH: I wanted to see who predominantly is taxed with this tanning tax. Is it men? Is it women? So I went to a little Google search where I was sitting here in the discussion, and what I found on Google is roughly 80 percent of who is taxed are women. So out of the 600 million dollars that has been created by this tax, which is an interesting excise tax, 480 million dollars has come from the backs and the pockets of women. Today's International Women Day. It's interesting that no one is bringing that up.
And I just would like for people to look at the jobs from the tax but also whoever decided to impose this tax seven years ago, before I was here, I'd be quite curious of why did they just randomly pick this tax to have it paid for on the backs of so many females.

SPEAKER: Gentleman yield–

JS: I'm not done yet, sir. And so, when you just look at the facts, roughly 80 percent of the individuals who are burdened with this tax are females. It looks like an interesting target which I think is inappropriate. You know there's a lot of taxes out there. But you could tax a lot of different items if you want to stop behavior. You know I love ice cream. Ice cream is probably not the most healthy thing to eat. Why is there not a tax on that? You know what, if you look at the number one cause of skin cancer, it's not tanning beds. Do a Google search. It's the sun. So I noticed the people over here haven't found too many taxes that they dislike. So why have they not proposed a tax on the sun instead of tanning beds?

JD: US Representative for Missouri's 8th district Jason Smith, addressing the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday.
The GOP's plan to repeal the 10 percent tax prompted the following response from the American Academy of Dermatology. "The Academy is disappointed that the proposed repeal legislation ignores the serious public health impact of indoor tanning, and the dramatic rise of skin cancer in young women."

Mendelssohn discovery

Guest: Sheila Hayman

JD: Felix Mendelssohn is a big name from the Romantic period of classical music. His sister Fanny Mendelssohn isn't really a name at all. And so people assumed that the piano masterpiece Easter Sonata which was signed F. Mendelssohn, had been written by Felix. But in this case F stands for “fail” because Easters Sonata, well where it's concerned, F stands for Fanny, who it turns out, was the real composer of the piece. And yesterday, for the first time since it was written 188 years ago, it was finally performed in the UK under her name. We reached Fanny Mendelssohn's great great great granddaughter Sheila Hayman in London.

CO: Ms. Hayman, what was it like to hear your great great great grandmother's composition played yesterday under her name?

SHEILA HAYMAN: It was… it was absolutely marvelous actually, and it was very emotional I mean for myself for my 91-year-old dad, who was sitting through some modern music he wasn't quite sure about in order to see Easter Sonata. I think everybody who's been involved is bringing this story into the light somehow, I feel that we were vindicating Fanny after what, 190 years, to finally to bring this composition into the public view. I can't imagine that she would ever have been able to think of such a thing happening.

CO: Now you must have grown up knowing that you were related to Felix Mendelssohn, and his career and his life. Did you know all along that his sister Fanny was also a composer of this caliber?

SH: Well when you were 10, you know, it's much more useful to be related to kind of, I don’t know, John Lennon or Marc Bolan in those days, then to some old dead German guy. So I never really took very much interest, or I knew about it, but I started to get very interested in Fanny really after I made the film about Felix for the BBC a few years ago. And his attitude to Fanny was so extraordinary that he encouraged all these other women composers and women musicians, and yet the one woman he wouldn't encourage was his own sister. You know, they were inseparable for the first 20 years of his life. They composed together. They showed each other their work before anybody else. They were each other's fiercest critics. And for him somehow to sort of feel that you know nevertheless, it was fine for her just to kind of have a completely suppressed creative existence and not to encourage her in any way, was really bizarre to me. And so I started to find out more about her.
And then I discovered that she was just this marvelous woman. You know, she was very informal, she was rather formidable, she was pretty ugly but people just fell at her feet nevertheless because she was so charismatic. She was really brilliant. She hated kind of stuffy kind of social gatherings. And the night before her wedding she rolled up her sleeves while everybody else was celebrating and went out at her wedding music because Felix had been supposed to be sending some for London but had sort of fallen out of a carriage or something and couldn't deliver. So she just thought, well you know, I've never written any organ music before, but what the hell. I'll go ahead and do it. And she did. You know what a woman.

HM: Why didn't her brother Felix support her?

SH: Well the received wisdom is that in those days, for a family as that social position in Berlin, it just was completely not the done thing. And also because they had given up their Jewish religion so that they could travel, so that they could have civil rights, mostly so that Felix could have a career. But I think having done that, having won this social position with such difficulty, it was a big thing you know to say oh well, my sister is just going to kind of you know, shame herself in public. It's almost impossible to imagine now. But I think that's what people say. But I don't think that's really satisfactory because he knew her so well and that's really why I'm embarking on this sort of further detective story to uncover not just the mystery of this manuscript, but the big mystery of their relationship.

HM: But she was very talented. He knew that. Do you think at any level it was jealousy that kept him from allowing her to flourish?

SH: It's sort of hard to imagine that because you know, he was obviously such a genius and he was so brilliant, and he was, unlike many geniuses, you know, both celebrated and loved in his lifetime. But I think they were very different personalities. If you listen to his music, it's full of brilliance but it's sort of the art that conceals art. It seems effortless and it seems polished and it seems finished. Whereas if you listen to the Easter Sonata or other work of Fanny’s, they're full of kind of passion and much more adventurous and much more kind of daring, and much more, you know much less trammeled in a sense. And so perhaps, in a way he was afraid or threatened, not by her talent, but by her emotional nature. And maybe he felt that that was somehow inappropriate or threatening. You know he wouldn't have been the first or the last man to feel it.

CO: And we’re talking about him and not her. So how do you think she felt about it? Do you have any sense of how she perceived herself or how ambitious she was or how supported she felt?

SH: Well she was a marvellously modern sort of mixture of obviously having a deep confidence in her own talent. I mean this is a woman who at 500 pieces of music. She sat down every day you know as I said, in a fairy tale, you know her husband refused to marry her unless she wrote. He turned out to be the hero of the hour. So you know, she was writing, she was at some level clearly had a completely incomparable unconquerable urge to create. And yet at the same time she was not sure she was good enough. You know she wasn't completely convinced that this was the right thing for her to be doing. Like so many women, I think then, and probably even now, you know, to insist on the right to play, which is what creativity really is. At the expense of looking after your family, looking after your husband, looking after your children. That's quite a big thing for a woman to do.
And I think that to me makes an absolutely fascinating character and one with whom I feel a lot in common actually.

CO: This Easter Sonata that was performed yesterday under her name. When it was discovered, it was believed to have been Felix Mendelssohn. How was it finally determined that it was actually by Fanny?

SH: Well it was determined by a marvellously creative woman called Angela Mace Christian, who's a really really thorough Fanny scholar and she… well the recording was made in 1970. She heard it in about 2010. And when she heard it, she immediately knew that this must be Fanny. And she knew that Fanny had written an Easter Sonata but that it hadn't been mentioned since 1829. So she went all the way from America to Paris, saw the pianist, persuaded the pianist to take her to visit the man who'd produced the record. Persuaded the man who’d produced the record to show her the manuscript which he finally, rather reluctantly, did, and she immediately saw that it was in Fanny’s handwriting. So he said, as he still says, “Well I mean she obviously just copied it out for her brother. That's what women do.” But Angela was able to say, “Well in that case, it wouldn't have all those crossings out all over it, would it?” But the real clincher was that she had also found and seen in the Berlin archives, a volume of Fanny's work, which had 30 pages missing for no obvious reason, and they had numbers, and the numbers with the same numbers as the manuscript she saw in Paris.

CO: Wow. This is an amazing story and I appreciate you telling that to us, Ms. Hayman. Thank you.

SH: It was fun. Thank you.Bye.

CO: Bye.

JD: Sheila Hayman is the great great great granddaughter of composer Fanny Mendelssohn. And yesterday for the first time Fannie's masterpiece Easter Sonata was performed under her name in London. For years, well, for a while 188 years, it had been wrongly attributed to her brother Felix.

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Part 3: Lisa Raitt, whale exhibit

Road Rage

JEFF DOUGLAS: Edmonton police announced today that they have made an arrest in a case that they have called a “vicious road rage incident”. And it was about as vicious as you can imagine. A man reportedly attacked a woman with a crowbar, breaking both her arms. She has also had to undergo surgery. But yesterday she was able to tell the CBC's Emily Fitzpatrick what happened when she came across a car blocking the road. The CBC agreed not to use her name because she fears for her safety.

SOUNDCLIP

WOMAN: This guy blocked the road. I honked at him and he finally moved. And he just kind of drove by. I pulled over and he got out of the car. Or he came up, passed me, and then backed up and came out, and I got out of my car. I figured that would probably the best because then I'm not trapped. And he raised the crowbar and hit me, and then I blocked it with my one arm. And then he raised it again and hit me on the other arm.

EMILY FITZPATRICK: What was going through your mind while he was–

WOMAN: Raising the crowbar? I don't want him to hurt my car. I don’t want to have damage to my car.

EF: So it didn’t even get in your mind that he might be going for you? You think he was trying to kill you?

WOMAN: I have no idea.

JD: That was in the Edmonton woman speaking with the CBC from the hospital yesterday. Today, Edmonton police announced that they had arrested and charged a 28 year old man in the incident.

[Music]

Lisa Raitt

Guest: Lisa Raitt

JD: Time to go.
That was the Lisa Raitt's advice for some of her rivals last month. The former Conservative cabinet minister is vying with 13 others for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. She urged at least half them to step aside to make room for the real contenders.
But the CBC's latest analysis of polls, endorsements, and dollars donated puts Ms. Raitt in the third tier of contenders herself, way behind Maxime Bernier and Kevin O'Leary, who appear to be out in front.
We reached Lisa Raitt in Toronto.

CAROL OFF: Ms. Raitt, is it time you took your own advice and stepped out of this race?

LISA RAITT: No, not at this time. I'm definitely taking a look at what's going on. I'm very cognizant, as I say all the time. I’m a practical kind of girl. I'm looking at polls, I’m looking at information. But certainly it is not this point in time, something for me to make a decision on.
But as I was open about before, Carol, I'm always looking at what is the best interest of the party and I'm not shy about that. That is what every candidate should be doing.

CO: And that's what you've said. Elsewhere you've said it's time to put aside our arrogance and think about what's best for the party and we're getting close to the end of this and it's time for people to be able to look at the top contenders. And you're not one of them.

LR: I think I am. I think every time we take a look at polling you get to see that people put me up there in terms of whether or not they'd like me as a leader and so I still believe that there is a path for me. Am I at the top of the list? No I'm not. I have to be cognisant about the best way for me to win, because it is still about winning.

CO: When you say that you still see a path, there might be a path, what is the path? Without getting too technical about the machinations, what is the path you see to leading this party?

LR: So the way that it breaks down in our party, there is 338 ridings, there's a hundred points per riding. I’m strong in Atlantic Canada. Those are my roots are, that's where I have a lot of endorsements and a lot of support. I'm strong in B.C. I'm strong in Ontario. I'm not strong in Quebec and I'm not particularly well-known. I will admit, in the prairies. But these are all things that you take consideration of and you give that final push and in talking to those communities before membership cut-off which is on March 28^th.

CO: And you still say it's possible that you might lead the Conservative Party of Canada.

LR: I do. Because a lot of people will look at me as their second or third choices, and the people who are currently at the top can be polarizing, and they may not have that second ballot or a third ballot or fourth ballot. We will crunch the numbers and make the appropriate decision. But it's, we're working hard.

CO: You know, you mentioned something very interesting when you talk about polarizing characters at the top. Because the two leading contenders for leadership are Kevin O'Leary and Maxine Bernier. And you have made it part of your campaign, a large part of it, to warn against Kevin O’Leary. You called him someone who might hijack the party. But he's doing very well polling in the general public. Why do you think, what do you think is the appeal of Mr. O'Leary?

LR: He speaks extremely well, but he also has the ability to cut Mr. Trudeau down to size. And that's what Conservatives want to see right now. You know, they're not pleased with the government and they enjoy watching somebody talk about the fact that they are going to make the prime minister's life miserable for lack of a better word so that's attractive.

CO: So why does you support that? Why don't you get behind Kevin O'Leary?

LR: There's still a whole bunch more to either running a party or to running a government. So our membership may very much enjoy the fact that he is successful in talking about the prime minister and the way he does. However a general election, There's the things coming up from his past. The things that he has said, the things that I put on my website, that need to be weighed and that will be part of a negative campaign for. Any liberal or NDP group in the future.

CO: But people have pointed out this comparison they make between Kevin O'Leary and Donald Trump and it was very similar. Donald Trump had no establishment support from his party. Neither does Kevin O'Leary. Similar things, a background of outrageous things that Donald Trump had said. The people who supported him said, yeah, we still liked that guy. He's a straight shooter. He calls it like it is. Is there not a great possibility that Kevin O’Leary he has the same appeal among conservatives in Canada?

LR: I don't believe that’s the way an electoral campaign would go in 2019, quite frankly. That's not my sense of Canadians, that they're not completely jaded by the political process that they would turn into a complete outsider. And you know, Mr. O'Leary will have to square his policy points of view with true conservative policy points, especially when it comes to national security and defense. So there'd be a lot of work around it.

CO: The advantage Maxime Bernier has, at least in the dynamic of the party, is that he speaks very good French obviously, and Kevin O'Leary doesn't. What are the things about Maxime Bernier that you think possibly might not put him at the top finally.

LR: Max takes very strong positions that are attractive to parts of our Conservative party for sure, about supply management, about how he would deal with the CBC, or the CRTC. And he would take some very drastic stances on the economy. And my point of view on that is, you can't slash and burn your way to a smaller government without causing a lot of pain along the way. Max enjoys being known as Mad Max. He enjoys the kind of persona. And I don't know if that's something that's palatable to Canadians either.

CO: When he tweeted his red pill analogy, you tweeted back “WTF Max?”

LR: No, not F, H. What the heck.

CO: Oh OK, “WTH Max?” Has he responded to you, has he explained what he really means by that comparison, that analogy to the red pill?

LR: Well what came out on Twitter was that he said it was all about the Matrix. But that's an example of a team behind a contender who isn't tapped into the fact that four women who are engaged in the Internet are aware of this red pill phenomenon. And if I'm trying to attract more women to the party and I want them to give us a second look because they definitely walked away in 2015, it's not going to be helpful when people don't look at all the subtext around general memes. All you've got to do is Google “red pill” and go right to the point that I was talking about.

CO: And just for listeners who might not know what we're referring to, the “red pill”, this is an online meme that some men's rights groups are using.
Just finally one last question, Ms. Raitt. Can you see yourself as a minister in a government led by Kevin O'Leary?

LR: If I am asked to serve Canadians, I will always serve Canadians without a question. I'm the member of Parliament for Milton. I'm proud of the time that I spent there and if I have the honor to serve Canadians in a portfolio, I would take, because I believe that I can bring to the table something that's going to be helpful to any government. And I've always been open, Carol, that I will do my best to encourage members not to vote for people that I don't think will bring us to electoral victory. However, that being said, once somebody has chosen, they’re our leader and I will follow the leader.

CO: All right we will leave it there. Ms. Raitt, thank you.

LR: Thank you very much, Carol. Take care.

CO: Bye-bye.

JD: Lisa Raitt is a Conservative MP and she's running to lead the party. We reached her in Toronto.

[Music]

Scott Pruitt EPA

JD: For the new head of the EPA, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the time has come to address climate change. Not through urgent action but through more debate and analysis. Scott Pruitt made his case for just that this morning on CNBC's Squawk Box -- when asked this question by the show's co-anchor, Joe Kernen.

SOUNDCLIP

JOE KERNAN: Do you believe that it's been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate? Do you believe that?

SCOTT PRUITT: No. No I think that that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don't know that yet. As far as we need to, we need to continue debate and to continue the review and the analysis.

JD: Scott Pruitt, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning.
Mr. Pruitt requires more convincing than the very agency he directs. A statement on the EPA website states unequivocally: "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change."
And despite his claim of "tremendous disagreement" on its causes, Mr. Pruitt's position on the matter counters that of pretty much every expert body on climate change -- including: NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the International Panel on Climate Change, and the overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world.

[Music]

Plane gun shooters

JD: A little update now on an interview from last night's program. On the program last night we spoke with Mark Serbu who one of the stars, I guess you could call it, of a recent viral YouTube video in which he and two other people fire an automatic weapon into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida from an airplane. And that video, as you might imagine raises a lot of questions. One of which, one of the shooters asked in the video itself: “What are the legalities of this?” Well we now have an answer to that. Today the Federal Aviation Administration told us it has closed its investigation into the video. In an email, a spokesperson wrote, "We were unable to determine that any Federal Aviation Regulations were violated. If new information becomes available, we will reopen the inquiry."
So there you go: turns out shooting from a plane into the ocean is perfectly legal in the United States. So have fun in Florida on March Break.

[Music]

Whale exhibit

Guest: Mark Engstrom

JD: Its mass was somewhere in the vicinity of 140,000 kilograms. So when the blue whale's corpse washed up on the beach in Trout River, Newfoundland, its future weighed heavy on people's minds.
As It Happens covered the fate of that unfortunate, bloated whale extensively after it first drifted ashore in 2014. There was disagreement about who was going to deal with it. And concern that it would explode, which, thank goodness, it did not.
Finally, however, Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum stepped in. They helped dismantle the whale. They transported it to a different province, buried it in manure, and gradually, and methodically prepared it for an exhibit at the museum. That exhibit opens this weekend.
Mark Engstrom is a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. We reached him in Toronto.

CO: Mr. Engstrom, the first time that we spoke with you on this show, you were removing the flesh from a blue whale and then we spoke to you again when you were burying the bones in cow manure. Do you have lingering memories of that work?

MARK ENGSTROM: Well the lingering memories I have of it are mainly that I, as we took the whale apart piece by piece, I started to get a little bit worried that it wouldn't be as big as I'd imagined it when we first were observing the whale. It turns out that concern is incorrect and the whale is absolutely huge.

CO: So when you were doing it, you didn't, because you sat on the beach maybe, at that point didn't think that it was actually going to have that kind of scope of–

ME: Well, I mean, I’d been telling everyone how large the whale is. And as we started to take it apart piece by piece, you just see a pile of pieces. And somehow I thought, “Oh, I wonder if you wonder if people are going to feel like we were exaggerating the size.” But it's even bigger than I thought it was going to be.

CO: So you've put it back together now at the museum.

ME: We have.

CO: And how does it look?

ME: It looks absolutely fantastic. And the, you know, we've done this in record time, of doing it in just three years. It may seem like a long time to most, but actually, to clean and to decrease this whale in this period of time and mount it, is really fast. And, as it turns out, the whale looks absolutely outstanding, and the way it’s lived and the way we have a living whale swimming in the background, it looks fantastic.

CO: When I ask you about lingering memories, I think that when we spoke before, there were a lot of smells that you might still recall. Have you got them out of your system?

ME: Well not really, because in fact the watch that I wore when I was doing the whales, is on display.

CO: Oh really?

ME: And if anybody wants the opportunity to smell what they what it was like in 2014, they can come and smell my watch.

CO: So it’s a scratch and sniff exhibit as well.

ME: It is.

CO: It really, first of all, the whale beached in the warm weather and the other aspect of that is that people in the area, a tourist area, were very concerned about what they thought, the possibility the whale would blow up.

ME: Yes. People were concerned that it was going to explode. I knew that it wouldn't. They often bloat early and then sink back down which is what this one did. But people had seen images of whales exploding on the Internet, which wasn't the same situation, and became concerned that it was in fact going to explode all over town.

CO: And that was something that went around the world, that possibility. It was one of those I guess fake news we call it now.

ME: Well it even made it on Saturday Night Live. There was a skit about exploding whales on the beach right when we were doing it.

CO: There were two whales that were recovered for exhibition. One's going to St. John's and the other one in Toronto. And the back story of this is very tragic isn't it? About the pod of whales that actually died.

ME: Yes there are nine whales that were trapped in the ice and died just off the west coast of Newfoundland. And that’s a large portion of the adult population. It's about 3 to 4 percent of the number of blue whales that are surviving in the northwest Atlantic. So that was an absolute tragic event.

CO: How did the whales die?

ME: We don't know exactly. We just know that they were trapped in the ice. It was a very, it was actually unusually heavy winter for ice given that global warming has been thinning the ice up there. 2014 was very cold and the whales were you know apparently following an open area of water and then there was, the drifting ice blew in behind them and they got trapped.

CO: What do you want people to learn or to know about the whales from this exhibit?

ME: Well I hope that people can come and be immersed in the world of the blue whale. They can see them. They can touch them. They can smell them. They can feel them. And they will… and they can hear them. And I hope that people will get an idea what it's like to be a blue whale. Such a specialized and the largest an animal that's ever lived. And I hope they can then gain an appreciation and be inspired by the whales which will motivate everyone to support marine conservation which is the biggest benefit that I would hope would come from this exhibit. Is that people would support the creation of marine protected areas and the conservation of whales and the habitats in which they live.

CO: Well people can't help but think as they see this the skeleton of this whale in a museum that has many dinosaurs and many animals that have become extinct that there are great fears that that is happening to the Blue Whale. From your science, is there any chance that we'd ever see the numbers of blue whales recover?

ME: Yes. And I actually want people to understand that too. That they can make a difference. That we can save this whale, that we can that we can help conserve this species, and that there had been some success stories. So there's populations off the coast of California seem to have recovered to near pre-whaling numbers and other places. So some populations in other parts of the world are actually covering or recovering following the cessation of whaling. So I believe that that in fact, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that we can save these whales. We need to protect them and their habit and their habitat so it's not an inevitable story that somehow we're going to lose these whales. No we've got time to conserve them.

CO: Well I look forward to seeing the exhibit though I may not smell your watch. But this sounds really interesting. Thank you so much.

ME: Thank you.

CO: Good to talk to you.

ME: You too. Bye-bye.

CO: Mark Engstrom is the senior curator and deputy director of collections and research at the Royal Ontario Museum. We reached him in Toronto. The museum's exhibit Out of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story, begins this weekend.

[Music]

Lynne Stewart obituary

JD: Lynne Stewart was an unflinching lawyer even after she herself was imprisoned. The American civil rights attorney died Tuesday. She was 77 years old. Her legacy is complicated. She defended people who are underprivileged and under-represented. But she was also accused of conspiring with terrorists and ultimately she was convicted for aiding her client Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
In January 2005, Lynne Stewart spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC Radio's The Current. At the time, she was awaiting the jury's decision in the terrorism case against her. Here is part of their conversation, from our archives:

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LYNNE STEWART: Everything I did, I did as an attorney, within the ethical rules as we understand them. Nothing was done with any intent to aid terrorism. All was done in perfect good faith.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Now this is the first time the government has prosecuted an attorney in conjunction with a case of terrorism. Why do you believe you are being prosecuted?

LS: I think that my long record of being an activist, my work on behalf of minorities in this country, particularly the African-American community. All of that contributed.

AMT: Now your client was convicted on charges related to terrorism. Why do you continue to work for someone who is a convicted terrorist?

LS: We have an ethical obligation to represent even unpopular clients. He is a fiery preacher who uses rhetoric that is very unpleasant to American ears but it was all talk. There was really nothing that wasn't engineered through an informant that was working both for the FBI and for the Egyptian government. So for all of those reasons, we've continued our representation.

AMT: Do you think you crossed a line?

LS: I don't think so. You know, I realize that I have a very broad view of loyalty to the client. We had a trust here. Some would say a sacred trust.

AMT: Well in your view what is the line between communicating with the client and conspiring with that client?

LS: Well I'm very well aware of the law. As you know, I've done this work for over 30 years. I did not take any role in my client's so-called criminal enterprise. I think a client does have a right to counsel. All the people on death row who were recently exonerated because of DNA certainly needed counsel. We don't give up on people. We continue to represent them. When the government said in its opening “We locked him up and threw away the key.” Hello? We don't ever throw away the key.

AMT: But do you have any sympathy for the fact that we're talking about this post-9 11. That things have changed in the United States.

LS: Well I think things have changed but I think they've been changed by a very big push by the government more than anything. I don't think we want to end up giving up the very freedoms that we think are the important ones and the things that happened after 9/11 are nothing anyone should be proud of certainly and we should be exploring why did this happen. That's the answer. The United States has never come to grips with. Why did our foreign policy engender such a thing?

JD: Lynne Stewart on The Current in January of 2005. And just shortly after that interview, she was found guilty of supporting terrorism. When Stewart died Tuesday, she was 77 years old.

Kidman clapping

SOUNDCLIP

And the Oscar goes to… Mahershala Ali… Zootopia… Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer… Barry Jenkins… and Tarell Alvin McCraney for Moonlight… Viola Davis… Arrival… Sylvain Bellemare… Emma Stone, La La Land…

JD: To the average viewer the Academy Awards appear to be about rewarding excellence in filmmaking and high fashion.
But to the industry folk in the audience, for the whole excruciating ordeal, will tell you they're about something else: clapping. And more clapping. You clap for the host. You clap for the presenters, the nominees. You clap for all the winners including in 2017, two different Best Picture winners. So if you're going to the Oscars, you have to be ready to applaud until your palms are numb. But you also have to be red carpet ready. And sometimes, those two requirements leave you with a problem on your hands.
For example Nicole Kidman. You may have seen her at the Academy Awards in an Armani Privé gown, a glittering vintage diamond bracelet, Harry Winston diamond earrings, and what Forbes-dot-com described as a, quote, "cluster pear-shaped diamond ring in platinum", unquote. You may also have seen her doing what looked sort of like clapping, but was not clapping.
Over and over, she rose to gingerly pat her palms together, while never letting her fingers meet. At first, it was odd. Then it was concerning. Why was she clapping like that? Did an Academy-Award-winning actor who'd played Virginia Woolf, Grace Kelly, a ghost, and a penguin not know how to clap?
Well, this morning, Kyle and Jackie O, the hosts of an Australian morning radio show, cleared things up with Nicole Kidman herself.

SOUNDCLIP

KYLE: Can you clarify, seal hands at the Oscars. I told everyone I believed you were clapping like that because you had the rings on and you didn’t want to damage the rings. Is that right?

NICOLE KIDMAN: You’re so right.

KYLE: I knew it.

NK: You are so right, Kyle. That is exactly why.

KYLE: And everyone was like “Oh boy, can she clap properly?” And I’m like “You don’t know what it’s like to wear a million dollars worth of rings, you idiots. That's why she's clapping like tha. She doesn't want to damage the rings. I knew it.

NK: I'm so glad you clarified that. It was so awkward. And I was like gosh I want to clap. I don't want to not be clapping which would be worse. Why isn’t Nicole clapping?

JACKIE O: Of course.

NK: So therefore I’m clapping but it was really difficult because I had a huge ring all that was not my own but was absolutely gorgeous and I was terrified of damaging it.

JACKIE O: That’s fair enough.

KYLE: You know they’re putting it up on the big screen and seeing you there like [Sound: he makes seal noises]. And it’s just not fair.

JACKIE O: They’re not doing that.

NK: That’s right.

JD: Well that solves that. Nicole Kidman clearing up the mystery of her nightmarish clapping technique at this year's Oscars.

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March 9, 2017 episode transcript

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