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The AIH Transcript for April 12, 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: So close after so far. Superhuman Canadian runner Gary Robbins tells us how he almost became the sixteenth person ever to complete the gruelling, hundred-mile Barkley Marathons.

JD: Call judgment. A woman in Maplewood, Missouri launches a lawsuit against the city – after she was found in violation of a nuisance ordinance for calling the police about her abusive boyfriend.

CO: Look who's driving the omnibus. After promising to do away with giant bills overstuffed with unrelated proposals, the Liberals table a giant, 300-page budget bill overstuffed with unrelated proposals.

JD: Burned out. Hundreds of migrants are missing after an enormous fire at a refugee camp in northern France, and its former residents have now been told that the camp will not re-open.

CO: Lots of people pray on flights. Almost no one is preyed upon. A scorpion falls out of an overhead bin, into a passenger's hair, and then stings him, and it's only the second-worst thing to happen on a United Airlines flight this week.

JD: And...cease and de-cyst. A dermatologist finds that movie villains are frequently identifiable by skin conditions, and he says that's offensive on the face of it.
As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that hopes filmmakers will stop making such rash decisions.

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Part 1: Barkley Marathoner, budget office changes, United Airlines scorpion

Barkley Marathons

Guest: Gary Robbins

JEFF DOUGLAS: There are marathons. There are ultramarathons. And then there are the Barkeley marathons. The longest course has more than 160 kilometers through a state park in Tennessee. There is a 60 hour cut off and the competition, which happens annually, is so grueling that only 15 people have successfully completed it since it began in the mid 1980s. Gary Robbins was hoping he could add his name to that list this year which would have made him the first Canadian to ever finish the course and he came heartbreakingly close to achieving that goal.
Today just over a week later Mr. Robins is finally starting to feel human again and is talking about what happened at the Barkeley marathons this year. We reached him in North Vancouver.

CAROL OFF: Gary, how is your body recovering?

GARY ROBBINS: One day at a time right now trying to get as much sleep as possible and I would say feeling about as good as could be expected.

CO: As someone else said it was just heartbreaking to see the finish line and see you there. When did you learn about what had happened in the race?

GR: Well I'm very familiar with how the race is structured. And unfortunately I knew before a lot of people at the finish line knew that I wasn't going to be an actual finisher of the event. Unfortunately at hour 59, and minute about 40, I made I made a critical error in judgment through the complexity of the fog that had set in, I couldn't see more than five feet in front of me and this complete sleep deprivation that I was under. And I chose the wrong trail. I came down the mountain in the wrong direction and when I recognized my error, I knew that I didn't have time to correct that error. Turn around and still make the gate on the proper route in under the prescribed 60 hours. I made a choice on a muddied brain that I kind of regret. I took a bearing and shot down the mountain just trying to get to the gate in under 60 hours. In the end, I collapsed at the gate and 60 hours and six seconds. And knew immediately that I would not be a finisher of the race and not only was I over time, but I came to the finish from the wrong direction.

CO: So it didn't matter that you were six seconds over you. You were going to be disqualified anyways right?

GR: Exactly and I've got two regrets for the whole thing and the one regret is that I didn't in that moment have the presence of mind to stop myself, turn around, retrace my steps and accept that I hadn't finished. Accept that I had made a critical error and then finish in what would have been 60 hours and, whether it was three, five, or eight minutes, so that we could be having a conversation about the specifics of the time rather than talking about the misdirection and the six seconds over.

CO: Before we get to discuss the race more generally, describe for people though, those last, that last five minutes or so. You’re describing this, it's not just like you were just not running down the hill. You crossed a river, you were doing insane things in this sleep deprived state of yours.

GR: I really was. I was bushwhacking down the side of a mountain, I had taken a bearing from my compass, I recognized where I was on course and where the finish was. I knew I didn't have time to retrace my steps so I took a straight shot for the finish.
And as I bushwhacked down the mountain, I found myself at a river crossing, and we had had torrential rains for the last half of the last lap, the better part of six or seven hours, and the rivers were quite swollen and I was staring at a river that was three times the size of what it was the day before. And I made a judgment, a very ill-conceived judgment at that moment in time based on my complete sleep deprivation to swim that river. The river was chest deep and flowing rapidly and I probably washed down 30 feet of river before I came out on the other side. And as I mentioned I had two regrets and my biggest regret is that I somehow managed to make that decision in that state of mind.
As a father and an experienced back-country enthusiast, that is something I would never condone, and I if I could take anything back from that day it would have been that ill-conceived concept that swimming the river in that moment was a good idea.

CO: For anyone who thinks that, well how come he couldn't follow the route if he's on this marathon, this Barkely marathon, and for those who don't know, how do you actually run this marathon?

GR: This course is known to be longer than a marathon per lap. It's five laps, so the distance is anywhere from, it's believed to be anywhere from 120 plus miles, so well over 200 kilometers long. You have 60 hours to get to the finish line. There are 67 thousand feet of climbing and descent, which is base sea level to the top of Everest and back twice and there's no flagging and the majority of it is off trail bushwhacking.
They hide books in the forest and you pull a page out of the book that correlates with your bib number to prove that you've gone the right direction on the course.

CO: And you're doing this without sleep, we should point out. Like 60 hours, last year when we spoke with you, when you when you attempted this race, you said you were hallucinating at some point. Did the same thing happen again?

GR: So yeah, as you mentioned, you know there's no time for sleeping. It's a 60 hour cut off and if you have any chance of finishing, you're going to be moving for all but a few minutes of those 60 hours. This year I managed to get about 25 minutes of sleep. And then on the fifth lap, last year we talked about hallucinations. This year, I used music, which helps to focus my mind a little bit more. But I did still manage a couple of them on that last lap halfway through I went through the night into the sunrise although it was a dreary day, so there wasn’t much of a sunrise and about an hour into the day, I started seeing bright flashes of light in my peripheral. The first one I thought was a car, the second one I thought was a headlamp, and then I realized that this was going to be my blessing of a hallucination this year, was blinking and seeing bright lights around me.

CO: It was clearly angels who were watching over you.

GR: That's right exactly. And the second hallucination that occurred was, while I was listening to my music, I was listening to more beat based music rather than lyrical, and the operator voice that you get when you call in to get your phone messages, she decided to make an appearance and was actually talking over the beat based music that I was listening to.

CO: For real or did you just imagine that?

GR: Well of course it is all in my head and ears and imagination and a hallucination. But I started hearing a voice in the music and it sounded all too familiar. And about a minute later I thought, this is the voice that I hear when I call in to get my phone messages.

CO: Why does this race matter so much to you? Why do you… I mean people say how do you do it. Why do you do it?

GR: When I got into the sport I was 27 years old. I got into expedition adventure racing. My goal was truly to find what my outer markers were and my outer limit. I actually said at the time that I wanted to be confronted with being on my knees and questioning how I could possibly go a step further. Through the years of doing the expedition racing it evolved into the ultra-running. I learned about the Barkley many years ago. It sounded like the ultimate human test.
How do you possibly solve this Rubic's cube of the physical, mental and navigation and up against a clock that doesn't stop ticking? From the first day I heard of it, I knew I always wanted to do it. Now that I've come so close twice it's just so bittersweet to be having this conversation about having a second time not finished and know that at some point I will need to return a third time.

CO: So we're going to have this conversation again next year?

GR: I don't know about next year we're… my wife and I've had plenty of discussion and while we've basically said is we will 100 percent go back. But what I really want to do right now is take the one or two months necessary to get back to being 100 percent and feel like I'm fully recovered. And sound of mind before I make any rash judgements.

CO: Well Gary I look forward to our conversation about your victory.

GR: I appreciate that so much Carol thank you.

CO: Take care. Bye-bye.

GR: Bye now.

JD: That was endurance runner, which seems to be an understatement, Gary Robbins talking about this year's Barkeley marathons, one of the most difficult long distance running races in the world. Only one person finished the race a week ago and Mr. Robbins came very very close himself. We reached him in North Vancouver. And if you'd like to see some photographs or to hear that interview again visit our website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Budget office changes

Guest: Kevin Page

JD: The Liberal government says they're following through on a promise to expand the powers of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. To that end, they've introduced legislation that would boost the watchdog's ability to find out what's really going on with the government's books.
However, Kevin Page says the same bill could also undermine the independence of the office – and its ability to speak truth to power.
Mr. Page was the first Parliamentary Budget Officer. We reached Kevin Page in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Page, these changes to the Parliamentary Budget Office, is this a case where the government gives us and the government taketh away?

KEVIN PAGE: I think it's, they're giving independence on the one hand and I would agree, I think they're taking it away. At least it’s a significant risk that they're taking it away with the other hand.

CO: And how do you see the possibility this could weaken in fact the budget officer?

KP: You know, with the current legislation, put the Parliamentary Budget Officers and Officer of the Library or Parliament, and it can release when Parliament is sitting and not sitting. It can certainly provide forward looking reports on what the work will do, but it doesn't have to get these reports approved by the speakers of the House and the Senate. And my experience, Carol, in is the Parliamentary Budget Officer for that five year period was that… we often found ourselves at loggerheads with the speakers. You know, they didn't like the business model, they cut our budget by a third and we got into a significant issue late in the mandate where we were trying to get information on two MPs on, you know the impact of austerity, and you know, Departmental byplans. And the speakers tried to prevent us from taking it to court when the government said they're not providing that information.

CO: And just for people who think that maybe this is just a lot of infighting in Ottawa, just sort of background noise that doesn't affect them, this is, you spent those five years trying to pry information out of the fingers of the government and these were things that, just to know what they were spending the money on. What, when they said they're going to make budget cuts, what programs are being cut? These were the things you tried to find out, you put information in the hands of parliamentarians so they could figure out what they were deciding on, what they were voting on so. And how difficult was it during those five years?

KP: It's very difficult, and I think to get information, it was difficult with a small team to produce the analysis, but I think more importantly it really comes to speak to, do we want a system that has checks and balances? Where is the accountability? Do we provide, you know, this information to MPs. So when we're debating budgets as we were and are in 2016, 2017 budget, major increases in spending. You want to put information in front of MPs hands. Are we going to get value for money on infrastructure plans where we're doubling infrastructure? And you know, are we picking the right projects?
After we spend, we double the amount of money over the next 10 years from 60 to $120 billion, you know, what are we going to get for that? And so if MPs don't have that, and we're asking them to vote very you know, blindly. And I think, we want to see legislation written in the same way we have legislation for the Auditor General. You know, in the legislation for the AG, it says, like you're the auditor for the public accounts. You do what you need to do. You examine what you need to examine in order to make sure we have a clean set of books. I think it needs to be a strong, I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer provides a bookend type of function to the AG, so the guditor general’s you know is going to provide this financial due diligence function after we spent the money.
But we want a party budget officer making sure that MPs are providing the due diligence. As they're providing these authorities for the government you know to spend money. And so yeah it needs to be just as strong. And you know, the legislation is not as strong and if you look even in the current budget implementation bill there's no there's draft legislation for a new infrastructure bank. And so there's you know the legislation the lays out clearly how important the job is for economic growth, for getting good infrastructure, lays out very clearly the functions of the infrastructure bank. And you know, lays out even the kind of skillset that we want the chief executive officer in the board to have. You don't see that for the Parliamentary Budget Officer. And you have to roll for MPs, to hold the government accountable, so important.
We're missing an opportunity. It raises the question of whether or not this new draft legislation is in fact any better than the existing legislation.

CO: Do you see improvements? Is there any place you can point to say this is better than it was before?

KP: Yeah the office is independent. By independent we mean it will be a separate office. So, when I was the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we fought over sort of things like hiring people, and you know contracting people to do certain types of work. Actuarial estimates etc. When I was Parliamentary Budget Officer, I worked at pleasure, which means that after any report I could have been just let go.
Now under the current legislation, it will be dismissed for cause. And I think right now there's a role for all parties to play in terms of picking the Parliamentary Budget Officer. So those are important improvements. Also the government is saying we want the Parliamentary Budget Officer to help opposition parties cost, political platforms before the next election. That's an improvement.
So that's a major give on independence and strength in the office. But that could all be easily taken away by speakers not approving the work plans of Parliamentary Budget Office. And I say that, like what's the risk of that? I think the risk is significant because as I said, look we fought with speakers on the big issues of the day and you know in the next year or two, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, may have to look at a very difficult file. It could actually be infrastructure. And you know, the speaker of the house, who's an elected person, who is a Liberal, may say, you know this is not going to be good for my government, I need to get elected in 2019. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying, like really we're voting on this now. MPs need to understand there's no real plan, there's no departmental plan from Infrastructure Canada that really lays out what we're going to get for all that new money. And we need to see a plan.
So it could be you could easily see the speaker say “I'm not going to, I will not approve that.” The Auditor General does not need to get its work plans approved by the speakers. So I think it's good, we should see work plans in the PBO. But you actually, to have to have political people approve it I think would take away the independence of the officer.
But you know I still I thank the government for trying, for putting this legislation forward. I worry that we won't get the amendments that we need. It's rare that you see amendments, Carol, on these budget implementation bills. But you know who knows maybe the government will have a change of mind here.

CO: Mr. Page, thank you.

KP: Bye.

JD: Kevin Page was the first Parliamentary Budget Officer. He is now the president of the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy. We reached him in Ottawa. And as Mr. Page mentioned, this proposal to change the way the Parliamentary Budget Office works, is contained in the government's all important Budget Implementation Bill.
This year's bill runs 300 pages and it's packed with little changes to the way this country works. And that had NDP Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen asking the prime minister this in Question Period this afternoon.

SOUNDCLIP

NATHAN CULLEN: Not so long ago, the man from Papineau said this about omnibus bills and I quote “I wouldn't use them. Period.” Well, that seems pretty clear. He also said “The kitchen sink approach here to me is a real worry.” Yeah, me too. Yet the prime minister is just drop a 300 page omnibus bill on Canadians. So my question for the Prime Minister is what ever happened to that guy from Papineau?

[Sound: Applause]

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Mr. Speaker, I saw, for many years [Sound: Laughter from the House] the biggest government use only this legislation as a way of avoiding debate, as a way of putting everything into a piece of legislation whether or not it had links to it. A budget bill contains–

SPEAKER: Order. Order.

JT: Any budget bill contains a broad range of provisions that will improve [Sound: shouts from the House] economic outcomes for Canadians, will touch on a broad range of issues because Canadians want to know that their government is dealing with the broad scope of the challenges that Canadians facing on the economic level. That's exactly why we're proud of all the elements in this budget that are being put forward to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. Thank you Mr. Speaker.

SPEAKER: Order. The Honourable Member for Skeena, Bulkley Valley.

NATHAN CULLEN: Every budget contains a broad range of provisions. I didn’t think I’d see him quoting Stephen Harper in [unintelligible]. I’m sorry, but by the Prime Minister’s own definition, his is an omnibus bill. And what's the word for that? Oh yeah. Hypocrisy.
This bill changes the PBO. A critical watchdog that this prime minister once said, and I quote “The independent strength to offer the check and balance to a government.” Well this prime minister's omnibus bill completely guts that independent strength of the PBO. That's something from a guy who used to admit the checks and balances were essential because and I'll quote again, the prime minister with a majority is more powerful than any Western leader. So why is this prime minister gutting the power to hold him to account.

[Sound: Applause]

SPEAKER: Prime Minister.

JT: Mr. Speaker, we are proud [unintelligible] to strengthen the independence of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. To make them a full Officer of Parliament, accountable to the speakers of the House and the Senate and not to the Librarian of Parliament. To give them greater tools to be able to access information to answer for the questions parliamentarians may ask. And even, Mr. Speaker, at the request of political parties, to evaluate political platforms, to make sure the Canadians know what they're getting when they vote for someone.

JD: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau answering NDP Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen this afternoon in Question Period.

[Music]

United scorpion

Guest: Linda Bell

JD: David Dao was not the only passenger on board United Airlines flight to have a disturbing experience on Sunday. Richard and Linda Bell were flying United, home to Calgary from a vacation in Mexico. They were on a connecting flight out of Houston and about halfway through that flight, they say a live scorpion fell from the overhead compartment onto Richard Bell's head. We reached Linda Bell in Calgary.

CO: Linda did you see this little creature fall on your husband?

LINDA BELL: What had happened, I just got up to go to the washroom when I came back, when he sat down, I could see him grab for his head, and then when he grabbed for his head, he pulled something from his head down to the armrest. And he didn't know what it was and so it fell on his plate. And then when he picked it up to kind of see what it was, I thought it looked like a little lobster because it had a little claws and a tail.

CO: A little lobster–

LB: Not realizing. Well you wouldn't think a scorpion on a plane.

CO: And so it looked like a lobster. How big was it?

LB: It was about an inch and a half long. Like I just sort of saw the front part of it, as I said you’re not expecting to see something like that. And then the gentleman beside us was from Mexico. And he goes “Oh my god, that's a scorpion.” So my husband threw it on the ground and the gentleman got up and stomped it, did something to it. I was sitting by the window. By then I was like oh my god I couldn't believe what was happening. And all they saw was the scorpion swung around like the tail part and it stung him.

CO: Oh you saw the tail actually do that swing.

LB: Yeah it was into his thumb.

CO: And was he hurt?

LB: He said it felt like a bad hornet sting. There was and numbness, tingling and then the flight attendant came. They told me, like they first of all they announced, you know, they asked on airline if there's any doctors or any nurses and no one responded. But there was though a team of people that were on a missionary and one woman came up to us at first class and identified herself that she was a medic and could look at stings. So we asked, she asked the plane, United, I mean it could have been any plane, so we're not going to bash United because the staff did what they could. Meanwhile, we're on the wifi. Of course the one that we Google is the most poisonous one. And we're trying to find out whether to ice or heat because the flight attendant didn't know.

CO: Wow. And there's nobody that knew what to do with a scorpion bite.

LB: Exactly. That's what our thing is. Not saying that scorpions are always on planes, but they have everything else for precautions. And the thing that after reading it, like not seeing what could have happened had it been something poisonous, it could have been a disaster. The whole flight. I was just in a daze.

CO: So you're actually thinking at some point, you're looking at your husband, wondering if this is it. I mean that's–

LB: Well he wasn’t… I watched him for about half an hour, like a good half an hour like panicking and nothing was showing. They told us, the medic lady that talked to us, she was just the first-aider that seeing these type of things, watch for lines. Watch this. Watch for that. And if he's if he starts convulsing, and you know I'm sitting there, like when you hear in that you're up in the air, you’re thinking “Oh my god, I hope it doesn't happen.” Meanwhile I'm on the Wi-Fi with my sister who's a retired nurse. And she's going “Did they keep it?” I'm like “No they've flushed it.”

CO: Oh my gosh so what happened. Just go back, so what happened to the Scorpion?

LB: They flushed it down the toilet.

CO: So they don't they can't even look at to see what kind of a creature it is.

LB: Exactly.

CO: So when we landed, first of all the EMS came on, like they told me they were going to take him by ambulance, but once they assessed they said “OK well we don't see anything now.” But you know, if something does happen, please go to your closest emergency room. So one thing that I can't understand is why they didn't do an incident report. You know what happened, what precautions were in place, what they gave my husband. I would I would think you'd want an incident report just for United or any airline, not just United in general. Like this happened on a flight just because something did happen. Fortunately it wasn't a poisonous one but because they flushed it they don't know where it was from because the flight didn't originate from Houston, it came from another country so we're not sure where it got on or if there were more, or what, you know what had happened.

CO: And you think and you think it may have fallen out of the luggage that was overhead.

LB: Well my husband stood up, it must've been like dangling or something because my husband has a very thick head of hair thank God. But he felt it enough that it would be like kind of like a thump on your head. I guess it just happened so quickly. When you're in the air, like my thoughts of being a mother of two kids and a wife is like oh my God. And after two weeks vacation, like oh my God my husband. L ike I was, just like I kept saying “Are you OK? Show me your thumb. You know, are you breathing OK?” Mind you, I was probably bugging him but I just wanted to make sure because they were telling me to watch for him. But the flight attendants really didn't know what to do.

CO: It doesn't sound like there's much of a medical kit onboard either.

LB: Exactly, like I'm not saying that it’s United. I’m saying any airline in general. I'm sure there’s been other episodes with scorpions or you knows, there could be a poisonous snake.

CO: Did you… now this has all happened on Sunday and United was having a very bad day as you know. Did they follow up with you or were they just too much of a crisis mode to find out what happened afterwards?

LB: To be honest, we really hadn't thought about that aspect of it. The aspect more that we thought of is that having safety measures, that if something does go wrong, especially when you're in the air, like at least some type of kid or something. If someone's in distress.

CO: And has United followed up with you at all?

LB: Not as of yet. No but what had happened was, my husband switched seats with another passenger because, so he could sit beside me and his name is Richard Bell, but his proper name is John Richard and we've had to switched seats with a passenger who was probably quite relieved that he didn’t get the scorpion sting.
So no, we have not heard anything. My husband has sent an email to say that you know, this is it. And like we're not looking for money compensation, we're just wanting to put it out there. When you're flying like, your health and everything, it’s kind of on the plane to know that they have something at least put in place.

CO: Alright, I hear you. Linda, I'm glad you're OK and that you and your husband husband's OK. And thanks for talking to us.

LB: Thank you.

CO: Bye-bye

LB: Bye.

JD: Linda Bell's husband Richard Bell was stung by a scorpion onboard a United Airlines flight from Houston to Calgary on Sunday. We reached Ms. Bell in Calgary. And we did request a comment from United Airlines and they sent us a statement which read in part “Our in-flight crew immediately consulted with a MedLink physician on the ground who provided guidance for the incident and assured our crew that it was not a life threatening matter. Medical personnel met the aircraft after it arrived in Calgary.”

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Part 2: Missouri ordinance, movie villain skin

Missouri ordinance

Guest: Sandra Park

JD: She called the police about an abusive ex-boyfriend. Instead of helping her, the city punished her. That is the claim in a new lawsuit filed by Rosetta Watson against the city of Maplewood in Missouri. Ms Watson claims the city deemed her a “nuisance” which under the city's nuisance ordinance enabled it to force her from her home. Sandra Park is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. She is representing Ms Watson. We reached Sandra Park in New York City.

CO: Ms. Park according to this lawsuit, why was your client deemed a “nuisance” by the city of Maplewood?

SANDRA PARK: Ms. Watson was deemed a nuisance because she had made calls to the police for help with domestic violence she was experiencing. Under the ordinance, more than two calls relating to domestic violence incidents are considered a nuisance, and the city can take action based on those calls.

CO: What action did the city take?

SP: In her case, they looked at four incidents of domestic violence where police had responded, and said those constituted a nuisance. They revoked her permit to live in her home and the city as a whole. And so essentially, she was forced out of her home and she was unable to move anywhere else in the city.

CO: You have to have a permit to live in Maplewood?

SP: Yes. Neighborhood requires a permit of all of the residents before you live there. This is actually a fairly common requirement in the St. Louis County area although it is not common around the country.

CO: Can you tell us about the calls she made and what was happening, why she made those calls?

SP: Sure. So she was renting a home in Maplewood. She had an ex-boyfriend who on occasion came to her home. The first call that was cited by Maplewood was a call where he broke into her home and physically assaulted her. He was arrested. But that incident was cited as one of the nuisance calls under the ordinance. There were other instances where he similarly came to the home, was also arrested on those occasions, and yet again those calls were deemed a part of the nuisance that she had been responsible for.

CO: The police came and these weren't crank calls. She wasn't just making this up. Things were happening to her and she called the police for help.

SP: Yes definitely. And the police actually documented the damage to her home when he broke in. An injury to her lip when he had punched her. So they had all of that information in their records when the city chose to enforce the ordinance against her.

CO: And was he ever arrested and jailed?

SP: He was arrested three times by Maplewood. Ultimately what happened is after she was forced out of the city, she moved to St. Louis where he again unfortunately found her and attacked her. On that occasion and shortly after he was arrested and he was convicted and incarcerated. And actually, we believe he passed away while incarcerated.

CO: After she left Maplewood, did she still try and get the police to help her get protection from this man?

SP: Well the incident I just mentioned in St. Louis, she did not go to the police directly because she had had this horrible experience in Maplewood. She didn't know how the St. Louis police would react to the incident where she was attacked. So she took herself to the hospital rather than calling for assistance. The hospital called the police, and she was relieved to find out that she was not going to face punishment because of the police involvement.

CO: These nuisance ordinances, what's the purpose that they serve? Why do they have them in places like Maplewood?

SP: Nuisance ordinances can take different forms. Some of them are looking at physical conditions at a property, like you know lots of garbage being piled up. Those aren't the kinds of ordinances we're concerned about. The ones that we've been most troubled by are laws that penalize people for calling the police or for criminal activity occurring at their home even if they are the victims of the criminal activity.
What I've heard from many cities that have passed these types of ordinances is that they think it's a measure to reduce the number of police calls. So that would save the city money in terms of the police budget. But of course we think that's a very short-sighted approach.

CO: Has there been no questioning anyplace else where the victims of criminal activity are also penalized by these nuisance ordinances?

SP: Yeah unfortunately we've seen that these laws are common around the country and that they often will affect domestic violence victims. For many police departments, the biggest category of calls that they receive are related to domestic violence. So any time you start penalizing people for making calls for police service, you are most likely going to be harming domestic violence victims who are the ones making those calls. So we filed similar lawsuits in Arizona and Pennsylvania against cities that had similar laws. And in both of those cases, the cities decided to repeal the laws after the case was filed.

CO: But were the cities aware of this? Where they, I mean was this whoops we didn't intend that to include victims of criminal activity. These women who are victims of domestic violence and it's just a mistake? Or did they actually know that this was going on?

SP: No I think it's different depending on what city you're talking about, but the cities we sued in Pennsylvania and Arizona definitely knew about the impact on domestic violence victims. In Arizona, the city which was called Surprise, had actually been warned when they were considering the ordinance to pass it that this would harm domestic violence victims. And they enacted it anyway.

CO: Your client Rosetta Watson, does she have someplace to live now?

SP: She does fortunately. You know after Maplewood revoked her permit, she also lost a federal benefit that helped her pay for her housing. And so for years, she was really unable to maintain a secure and stable home. Luckily she was able to regain that benefit last summer and so is now living in a home.

CO: How does she hope to benefit from this lawsuit? What does she want to get out of it?

SP: You know her primary goal is to ensure that other victims of domestic violence and other residents in general do not face this kind of punishment. If you think about it, getting kicked out of your home and on top of that getting kicked out of the entire city, is perhaps one of the worst kinds of penalties you can think about. And we don't impose that on almost anybody, certainly not people who commit crimes. And then to think about actually imposing it on someone who's calling to police for help is probably one of the most egregious kinds of constitutional violations I've ever seen. And so that's really her goal, is to ensure that others do not experience what she did.

CO: We will leave it there. Ms. Park, thank you.

SP: Thank you very much.

KD: Sandra Park is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women's Rights Project. We reached her in New York City. And for more on this story visit our website cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Trump cake

JD: In a sit-down with Fox News, US President Donald Trump gave more details about the night he decided to fire missiles at a Syrian airbase.
Speaking to Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, President Trump explains that he was eating dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping and decided it was best to break the news over dessert. Here's part of that interview. And you'll notice the U.S. President remembers in great detail the piece of cake he ate but he does seem to be a bit fuzzy on where exactly he sent the missiles.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I was sitting at the table we had finished dinner, we're now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded. What do you do? And we made a determination to do it. So the missiles were on the way. And I said, Mr. President. Let me explain something to you. This is during dessert. We've just fired 59 missiles all of which hit by the way, unbelievable, from, you know hundreds of miles away. All of which hit.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Unmanned?

DT: It's so incredible it's brilliant. It's genius. Our technology our equipment is better than anybody by a factor of five. I mean what we have in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing. So what happens is I said “We've just launched 59 missiles. Heading to Iraq.”

MB: Headed to Syria.

DT: Yes heading toward Syria.

JD: U.S. President Donald Trump telling Fox business anchor Maria Bartiromo today that the 59 Tomahawk missiles he launched landed in Iraq.

[Music]

Villain skin

Guest: Vail Reese

JD: You can tell Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter are the bad guys because one of them kills Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the other is a serial killer who is also a cannibal. But you can also tell they're the baddies by looking at their skin. A new study published in JAMA Dermatology found that most movie villains are depicted with skin conditions. And researchers say that sends a damaging message. Dr. Vail Reese is a dermatologist who co-authored this study. He's also the founder of Skinema, a blog about how skin conditions are portrayed in film. We reached him in Yonkers.

CO: Dr. Reese, when did you first become aware that villains in movies tended to have skin conditions?

VAIL REESE: Well Carol, this is an interest of mine since I was a dermatology resident. I've always enjoyed watching films and as I trained to learn more about skin conditions, I realized that filmmakers actually use skin conditions in movies, and most commonly that's to show an evil character.

CO: We've mentioned in the introduction Darth Vader an Hannibal Lecter. How do they compare with heroes?

VR: In general heroes are not just good looking, they also have good skin. So it's going to be very rare that an actor who's cast as a male lead will have a scar or some facial deformity, but you'll often see that in the bad guys in the films.

CO: OK so talk about the bad guys in the film. And women as well or just generally men that have these skin conditions?

VR: Oh women too typically if you see a scar in a film, usually done with prosthetic makeup, that's going to be the bad guy. And women perhaps may play a witch. So often the witches have skin lesions too, warts, wrinkles, bags under their eyes. All signs in Hollywood that this is a character to be feared or avoided.

CO: What are some of the women characters?

VR: Well things like in the study the Queen from Snow White, when she transforms herself she becomes a witch, and she's got a large wart on her nose. We've also got the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, who in addition to having green skin, technically abnormal skin also has a large wart on her chin.

CO: With the exception of the green skin, I presume that you haven't seen a skin condition where people's faces are green.

VR: No that's true. We do have other discolorations of the skin, some people can get a bluish tint to their skin from certain medicines. Of course Albinism is the lack of pigmentation which would be the albino character being the evil character, the assassin. The Da Vinci Code probably the most famous example of that.

CO: But what are the conditions you've actually been able to identify, actual real conditions that a dermatologist would know?

VR: Well scarring and people do approach us with scarring, they want scars treated. They also if they need facial surgery for some reason, you know we have an epidemic of skin cancer, much of it non-melanoma skin cancer. So patients even though they don't even realize necessarily that I have this interest in dermatology movies, may say to me “Look Doctor, you're going to do this excision on my cheek. I don't want to look like that monster from Frankenstein” and what they're saying is not just that they want to stay looking good, that scars aren't attractive. I think there's a subconscious understanding that in films, scars also identify evil characters.

CO: You've mentioned in your study that alopecia often turns up in villains.

VR: So alopecia is just a general medical term for hair loss. So male pattern hair loss is the most common one we deal with, and in movies most often, the bald character is the evil character. In our study, Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs has a receding hairline that they specifically focused the camera on to really accentuate. And also, from It's a Wonderful Life, the evil character in that movie Mr. Potter is bald. It's basically this movie shorthand of the evil character.

CO: But there are no characters, good characters, who have any kind of facial conditions or scarring?

VR: Actually in our study, which looked at the top 10 movie villains based on the American Film Institute, compared to the top 10 movie heroes. It turns out 60 percent of the villains showed some type of skin condition and that involves hair issues.
Two of the heroes did. And Harrison Ford has a small scar on his chin. This reportedly is from some car accident he was in when he was a teenager and that you see from film to film. And also Humphrey Bogart has a small scar on his lip. But very different from the movie villains, these two scars are never really discussed in the plot. They're not really focused on and they weren't applied there with prosthetic makeup. So they're more incidental findings not really playing into the narrative.

CO: Doesn’t Rocky Balboa have a scar?

VR: He does have a small scar in the film but again not really played up to in the narrative. And then there are certain actors who just happen to have some scarring. I mean you may not realize, but Brad Pitt is not again on this list, has pretty significant acting scarring from acne he had as a teenager. Now that's usually minimized in films these days with the makeup, lighting, or even computer. But in general, if you’re an acne-scarred actor, it's not that you can't work in Hollywood, it’s that usually are going to be playing the bad guy. You're going to play the gangster or the hoodlum or the prisoner.

CO: What effect do you think that has on viewers?

VR: That was a great concern and that's really the point of the study. There are people with large facial birthmarks who have to deal with potential stigma and prejudice. People with extensive skin condition such as psoriasis or eczema. Many studies documenting higher levels of depression. People in Hollywood are extremely creative. And I would just encourage them to use that creativity in ways that still allow for interesting stories with complex and good and bad characters but not necessarily to always fall to the default scarred albino bald stereotypes.

CO: Are you seeing any shifts at all, any characters emerging that maybe this attitude or this perception is shifting?

VR: Yes well very significantly this movie Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds that came out last year was a hugely successful film. A comic book film where the character as part of his experimental treatment to cure his cancer, he develops scars and hair loss through his whole body. And here's a character who's kind of a smart alec, clever you know, beats up bad guys, entirely undermined by his skin condition and can't even approach his fiancé. She doesn't even know he's alive because he's so undermined not about just how he feels, but the people on the street who are pointing out his scarring which is a very powerful and authentic representation of what it's like to have severe skin condition and how society can really undermine one's confidence.

CO: And was at a kind of a game changer for you?

VR: Well there occasionally are these sympathetic characters and I like to focus on those films, and I actually like my fellow dermatologists to screen and see these films, films such as Philadelphia years ago with Tom Hanks, where his character had AIDS and the Kaposi sarcomas, those purple tumors, got worse and worse, and yet he wasn't a villain. So I think Hollywood is to some degree aware of this. And I do encourage producers and filmmakers to just try something different.

CO: Lots to think about here. Dr. Reese, thank you.

VR: Carol, thank you so much for taking the time.

JD: Dr. Vail Reese is a dermatologist and the founder of the blog Skinema. He also recently co-authored a study in JAMA Dermatology that found most movie villains are portrayed with skin conditions. We reached Dr. Reese in Yonkers, New York. And if you want to see more of those villains...head over to our website, cbc.ca/aih

[Music]

Letterman mother obituary

JD: Dorothy Mengering was never really a household name.
But for more than a decade beginning in the mid-1980s, she did make regular appearances in the households of millions of North Americans. She covered the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway; in Nagano, Japan; and in Salt Lake City. She wrote a cookbook. She welcomed television audiences into her home in Indiana on Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, smiling warmly and playing no-nonsense straight man to her wise-cracking son, as he threw out wild guesses as to the flavour of pies she'd had just baked. Late night viewers ate it all up. They loved her, even though, as I suggested off the top, very few could tell you her name. To the audience, she was simply and affectionately "Dave's Mom".
Dorothy Mengering, the real-life mother of David Letterman, died yesterday. She was 95 years old.
In 1996, upon the release of her book, Home Cookin' with Dave's Mom, Ms. Mengering appeared on The Late Show to present one of Dave's favourite childhood recipes.
Here's how that sounded.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LETTERMAN: Alright mom. Now, tonight we're going to cook something that was when I was a kid, this was a favorite meal of mine. Tell the folks what it is.

DOROTHY MENGERING: It's fried baloney sandwiches.

[Sound: Audience applause]

DL: Fried baloney sandwich. Alright, let’s… oh good we have the finished product here. In case we don’t get to it. In case you folks can't imagine what a fried boloney sandwich looks like. Tell the folks what we need here, mom.

DM: Alright. Two slices of baloney.

DL: Two slices of baloney.

DM: I’ll put them down.

DL: Put them right there–

DM: And cut from the center to the edge.

DL: Centre to the edge, just like that.

DM: Right and put them in a pan.

DL: Here we go. Put those boys, cook. Now, when I was a kid we had this I would say, every day, two or three times a day for four or five years.

DM: I don’t think so.

DL: You know sometimes Mom would sleep late and we’d have to make these up for our own selves. Mom, one o'clock in the afternoon, David, make baloney sandwiches yourself.

[Sound: Audience laughter]

DM: Two slices of bread.

DL: Two slices of bread, where did the [unintelligible] go?

DM: Put it right there.

DL: Right there? This is like a cutting board or something. Is it mom?

DM: Yeah, that’s right.

DL: OK.

DM: Now, put some mustard on there.

DL: Mustard, oh god I love mustard. You know I love mustard–

DM: I know–

DL: My favorite condiment, I love the mustard OK.

DM: That’s enough.

[Sound: Laughter]

DM: Time to turn them over. Got a little warm.

DL: Alright, just a little bit. Alright?

DM: OK. Now, slice the tomato.

DL: Slice up a tomato.

DM: Get the baloney out of there and put it on the bread.

DL: Is this really what you want to done?

DM: Yes but you need to slice it, but you need to get the baloney out of here.

DL: I’m doing the best I can, Mom. You’re driving me crazy. Mother please I’d rather do it myself. Remember that? That like 40 years ago or something. OK. There's the slice of tomato. Put it right on there.

DM: This way. Put that one over there.

DL: OK fine. Well it’s beautiful now. We have the finished product down here. So you get a better idea what it looks like. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, isn’t that lovely. It’s perfection. Come on over here. My mom [unintelligible]. I tell you it smells damn good.

DM: Mm. Man, that’s baloney.

JD: David Letterman with his mom, Dorothy Mengering on The Late Show back in 1996. Dorothy Mengering died yesterday. She was 95 years old.

Back To Top »

Part 3: Refugee camp, Saskatchewan budget email

Malala

JEFF DOUGLAS: She's only the sixth person to receive honorary Canadian citizenship. And she's the youngest person ever to address Parliament.
Earlier today, human rights activist Malala Yousafzai spoke to a packed House of Commons. The Nobel Peace Prize winner became known worldwide after being shot by the Taliban at 15 years old. She was targeted for speaking out about female education.
During her Parliamentary address today, Ms. Yousafzai condemned acts of terror committed in the name of Islam. She also mentioned that the Parliament Hill shooting in October 2014 prevented her from receiving her honorary citizenship.
She also praised Canada for its commitment to advancing women's rights, and working toward world peace. Most of all, however, she stressed the importance of welcoming refugees. Here's a bit of her speech.

SOUNDCLIP

MALALA YOUSADZAI: Many people from my own country of Pakistan have found a promised land in Canada. From Maria Toorpakai Wazir, a famous squash player, to my relatives here today.
Like the refugees in Canada, and all around the world, I have seen fear and experienced times when I did not know if I was safe or not. I remember how my Mom would put a ladder at the back of our house so that if anything happened we could escape. I still remember how I would read a Quranic verse, ayat al kursi, every night to protect our family and as many people as I could. I felt fear when I went to school, thinking that someone would stop me and harm me. I would hide my books under my scarf. The sound of bombs would wake me up at night. Every morning, I would hear the news that more innocent people had been killed. I saw men with big guns in the street.
There is more peace in my home of Swat Valley, Pakistan. But families like mine — from Palestine to Venezuela, Somalia to Myanmar, Iraq to Congo — are forced to flee their homes because of violence.
So your motto, and your stand, 'Welcome to Canada' is more than a headline or a hashtag. It is the spirit of humanity that every single one of us would yearn for if our family was in crisis. I pray that you continue to open your homes and your hearts to the world's most defenseless children and families — and I hope your neighbours will follow your example.

JD: That was Malala Yousafzai speaking at the House of Commons today. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient was in Ottawa today to receive an honorary Canadian citizenship.

[Music]

Hungary school

JD: The government of Hungary wants you to know that it does not agree with Michael Ignatieff. Not at all.
The former Liberal leader is now the President of the Central European University in Budapest. On the program last night, Mr. Ignatieff told us that the new legislation there could shut down the school. He accused Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, of having a grudge against George Soros, the US billionaire who founded the university.
Thus far, we haven't been able to arrange an interview with a member of the Hungarian government. But they have provided us with a statement that reads, in part, "There is a misleading and false Soros campaign going on with relation to the Soros university. The first lie of this campaign is that if the amended act on higher education comes into force then the Soros university will be forced to close. This is not true, and according to the new Hungarian regulations it will continue to operate.
The organizations funded by George Soros are consciously running a campaign of disinformation with relation to the university's case. They are using the amendment of Hungary's act on higher education to launch a comprehensive campaign against Hungary, the true reason and final target of which is to put pressure on the Hungarian governments' immigration policy."

[Music]

Refugee camp

Guest: Annie Gavrilescu

JD: The last official refugee camp in France burned to the ground this week. At least 1500 people had been living at the camp just outside Dunkirk in the north of France. It is not believed that anyone died in the fire but hundreds of people including children are still unaccounted for. The local government says it will not permit the camp to be rebuilt.
Annie Gavrilescu has been working at the camp, or was working at the camp before it burned. She's with the aid organization Help Refugees, and she was at the site earlier today. We reached Ms. Gavrilescu in Calais, France.

CAROL OFF: Ms. Gavrilescu, you were at this camp, this Dunkirk camp site, you were there yesterday. What did you see?

ANNIE GAVRILESCU: Well the camp itself is pretty much entirely gone. The fire has absolutely devastated the entire place. It's completely unlivable at the moment and nobody's really allowed back on the site. And still no plans by the authorities to rebuild the camp.

CO: And where have the people gone who were there? What happened to them.

AG: The people have been relocated temporarily to five gymnasiums, nearby to the former camps. But we have found out that on Friday there will be further relocated to accommodation centers across the country.

CO: The ones who, where you know where they are, they are in gymnasiums. But what about, there are reports that there's hundreds, maybe as many as 600 people who are unaccounted for at this point. What do you know about that?

AG: That's true. Not everybody has gone to the accommodation centers, gymnasiums, and even those that have gone, quite a few have already left. We know vaguely their location and we have been trying to find them. However as far as we know they're not going back into the gymnasiums.
We found out that only 1000 places will be created in accommodation centers, and that means maybe five or six hundred others who are not in the gymnasiums at this time might just miss out of the opportunity to go to safe protection.

CO: Before this fire broke out, what were the conditions in this camp?

AG: Well, what we’ve been seeing over the past three months is a very drastic deterioration of the conditions there. For months, we've been trying to convince the local authorities to increase the capacity of the camps in terms of accommodation and services and food security. However that’s not happened and that’s kind of allowed the tension in the camps to rise. And that's what led to the incident, the fire. A fight that we've heard may have started over the lack of appropriate accommodation. And because of the population increase in this camps, maybe 200 people were sleeping in conditions which were not living or sleeping places, they were just kitchens. And unfortunately, some of the individuals involved in some possible criminal activity and kind of having the run of the place, may have reacted to that quite violently, just putting a thousand and a half people in danger, and made them homeless.

CO: Were the fires deliberately set?

AG: We don't know. Quite possibly but we don’t know for sure.

CO: Some people were treated for stab wounds as well. Is that right?

AG: As far as we know that’s correct.

CO: How many unaccompanied minors and children were there in the camp?

AG: We have conducted a data collection last Sunday and for the unaccompanied minors in the camp specifically, and we gathered complete information on 120 of these minors on their own. And about 30 incomplete pieces of information as well. So I would comfortably say that they were 120 to 150 unaccompanied minors in the camps.

CO: And where are the people from? What countries are these migrants originating from?

AG: Most of the people who are on the camp were from Iraqi Kurdistan. A lot from Afghanistan. A few people from Pakistan, a few people from Syria. And that’s kind of the make-up of what the camps used to be.

CO: Is it fair or safe to say that the reason why the authorities were doing nothing to improve the conditions is that they wanted the right people to leave? They didn't want to support this community on the border. Is that right?

AG: I would say that's correct. We have had this problem, it was the same in Calais, when the authorities did not recognize the urgent need of the people who were here. Even the camp in Calais filled up to just over 10,000 people. At the same time in Dunkirk, the camp never really exceeded two, two and a half thousand people. But the authorities in both these areas just simply did not want people to settle there and were trying to get the numbers down.
However the way that they were doing this, instead of encouraging people [unintelligible] and disperse across the country, the way they were doing this is denying them access to the camps which actually led to a lot of frustration.

CO: I understand the fire was quite sudden. People left their possessions behind as they fled including. most critically, they've left documents behind. Identification documents that they needed.

AG: What do you know about that?

CO: Well that's absolutely true. The fire was really really sudden and a lot of people just fled for safety not realizing that the fire would spread so quickly and would be so devastating. So when our teams have been going to the gymnasium where people have been housed, our teams are constantly being asked about whether people can return to the camps to get their possessions that might have survived. And that hasn't been possible. And the police actually barricaded the camps today preventing people from going in. We will try tomorrow to get access to the camp and salvage as much stuff as possible to try and get the remaining things that are still there back to the people they belong to. However, in the last few months, we’ve seen an increasing number of people who have actually applied for asylum in France. And that means that a lot of their documents will have been destroyed in the fire. So we don't know exactly what the effects of that will be on their asylum applications.
People have also lost phones, they've lost money, they've lost valuable possessions, they've lost photos, and yet their identification documents, which were actually before their asylum going, in which every European countries has also been lost. So that in itself, it may not be an absolutely urgent need, but in the long run it affect people's livelihoods a really terrifyingly high amount.

CO: This is a very distressing story. Ms. Gavrilescu, I appreciate you speaking with us. Thank you.

AG: My pleasure.

CO: Goodnight.

AG: Goodnight.

JD: Annie Gavrilescu is with the aid organization Help Refugees. We reached her in Calais, France.

[Music]

From Our Archives: Mark Wainburg obituary

JD: His work helped transform HIV from a death sentence to a chronic and survivable illness.
The Canadian HIV/AIDS researcher and Order of Canada Officer Mark Wainberg died yesterday while swimming in southern Florida. He was 71 years old.
Dr. Wainberg was part of a team that discovered a key anti-viral drug that is used to treat HIV infection. He was also an outspoken advocate for research and prevention.
At the time of his death, Mark Wainberg was a lead investigator at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, and director of McGill University's AIDS Centre.
Back in 2004, As It Happens guest host Kathleen Petty spoke to Dr. Wainberg after the President of Uganda shocked delegates at a global AIDS conference by suggesting that abstinence, not condom use, was best for preventing HIV infection.
Here is part of that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK WAINBERG: Well he gave a lot of support to President Bush in regards to abstinence being the best possible policy for everyone to follow. And I think the consensus among scientists at the conference is that that is a fairly short-sighted approach. It's one that involves putting your head in the sand and pretending that the world as we know it doesn't exist.

KATHLEEN PETTY: This emphasis on abstinence is not just coming from Uganda. It also comes from the United States. There is that issue in addition to the very small U.S. delegation. What is the message from the United States?

MW: Well I think the United States is preaching abstinence in large part to serve the needs of the President Bush political agenda in the context of abstinence being preferable to any other modality out there as a preventive measure. We have to recognize that that may work well in Republican circles but it might not work for the world at large.

KP: How do you build on a conference like this? You will be chairing the International AIDS Conference when it's in Canada in a couple of years, so just explain the building process from one conference to the other.

MW: Well I think we want to learn from the previous conference and take it forward. We want to make sure that every political party that potentially might form a government two years down the road will honor the commitments that were made in May of this year when Prime Minister Martin pledged to support the global fund that will buy drugs for people suffering from HIV around the world. And also we want Canada to be part of an aggressive management strategy worldwide that will provide information in education in regard to HIV to everybody at need.

JD: From our archives, that was As It Happens guest host Kathleen Petty speaking to a Canadian HIV researcher Dr. Mark Wainberg. Dr. Wainberg died yesterday while swimming in Florida. He was 71.

[Music]

Budget email

Guest: Heather Landine

JD: When Heather Landine sent an email to her MLA recently, she expected to get the kind of pat response one usually gets from a politician. Something like, "Your email is very important to us." Or, "I am fighting for constituents like you."
Ms. Landine lives in Saskatoon and she had some concerns to put to her provincial representative about cuts contained in the recent provincial budget. So she was surprised when the response she got from MLA Eric Olauson was not generic and most definitely not gracious. It demanded his staff do some background research on Ms. Landine. But it was a demand she clearly was not meant to see.
We reached Ms. Landine in Saskatoon.

CO: Ms. Landine, let’s just go back to the beginning. You sent an email to your local MLA, Eric Olauson, and could you just sum up what you said?

HEATHER LANDINE: I had forwarded him the petition to reinstate funding for the provincial libraries. I had also included in there a few other questions I had for him as he was previously the city councillor for my ward. On other aspects that came across in the provincial budgets that I just wanted addressed. I felt based on his platform and his experience of city councillor, it kind of ran counter intuitive to what he stated he was going to do for Saskatoon.

CO: But mostly what you wanted to see was them to restore the funding cut to the libraries right? In Saskatchewan.

HL: That's correct yeah.

CO: So his office wrote you back asking for your mailing address and you responded with that address, and in the course of responding, you gave them some other ideas. You said you're planning to attend a protest. What did you say?

HL: There was an organized demonstration that was coming up on April 7th called to “Drop Everything and Read”, which was just a plan to show up at the MLA’s offices all across Saskatchewan and enjoy a good book. And I said that I would be showing up with my own children as well as my daycare and that I would be having lunch and story time in front of their office. And I said as there was, the legislature was not in session that day, and he was expected to be in his office, I said it would be very bad manners if you could not attend and give these children an answer as to why the cuts to education and the library were deemed necessary by our government.

CO: And speaking of children in daycare, that if people do hear noise in the background, those are the children.

HL: Correct.

CO: So now, so you wrote that and then you got a mail back. What did that mail say?

HL: Well it was an unintentional email for me to have received. He had looped me in by hitting reply all when he was intending to send it directly to his office admin, and he said don't reply to her about that protest. I need to look her up in Compass and figure out how to reply once I know more about her and my reply will be epic.

CO: I'm going to read this because just a few lines it says “Research her in Compass,” referring to you, “don't reply to her about that protest. I will once I know more about her and it will be epic.” What does that tell you?

HL: My initial reaction to that was I was fairly dumbfounded by what I was reading. That my MLA did not feel that I was justified, a response to the questions I had asked based on me being a constituent but that he needed to find out more about me and see if I was a party supporter and what other political history I have before I was deemed worthy for a reply.

CO: I should out to people that Compass, when he says research her in Compass, that instruction, that's referring to a database that his party, the Saskatchewan party, has about its supporters and its members right. He's asking is office to find out if you're actually a member of his party.

HL: And if I was a financial supporter and what other parties I may have supported instead. And then the comment of him saying that his response was going to be epic, was, I felt very unprofessional and very inappropriate, as well as rather insulting.

CO: Now he has written, he has said since that he mistyped. It wasn’t that he's mis-sent this email – he did – but that he didn't type properly. He didn't mean to say Compass. He meant to say that his office should check any previous correspondence. And that “epic” he said, he used obviously not a good word, but he meant that he was going to respond to you in a full and complete way. Do you buy that?

HL: I don't know. I know that my computer doesn't have predictive text when I'm writing emails and if I'm starting to type in a word like “correspondence”, Compass is not likely to come up in place of it. And I had never heard somebody reply that they're going to write a long email as “epic.” There's more of a known connotations for that word.

CO: So now you got a message back. He did send you an email quite quickly after that. What did he write?

HL: He sent it from his MLA account and he said “Hi this is Eric and I obviously sent this to the wrong person. Please call my office.” And at that point there was no you know “Sorry this was sent to you in error” or “I apologize that this was sent to you.” It was like no apology was included. Instead of contacting him by phone, I said if I was going to do any further contact it would be through email to kind of maintain a paper trail of our conversation and I proceeded to forward the email thread on to the SAS party Chief of Staff and the NDP.
I told them that I had some concerns here over how my MLA was addressing my questions and the need to research me.

CO: And what has Mr. Olauson and his government said to you in response?

HL: I heard from Mr. Olauson yesterday. He actually had called to apologize. His apology was at the request or demand of the premier who had instructed him to call and apologize to me and he was sanctioned by his party by removing him from one of the Advisory Boards.

CO: He did say call me at this number. We can talk about your concerns regarding the budget. Have you had any response to your concerns regarding the budget and the cuts to libraries?

HL: I have not yet received this epic response from him. No. He did assure me yesterday when he called, he was in the process of researching it to provide me with this response. And I did have to kind of hold back from asking him if it was indeed going to be epic. But there has been a lot of public backlash from this budget and all of these cuts. And so I quite look forward to hearing what he has to say to defend his party's decisions.

CO: Well I think the response has been epic.

HL: The fail has been epic for sure.

CO: Ms. Landine, I’ll let you get back to the kids. Thank you.

HL: OK thanks so much.

CO: Bye-bye.

HL: Bye.

CO: Heather Landine is a daycare operator in Saskatoon and that's where we reached her earlier today.

[Music]

Binders full of women

There was a time, and wow it seems like a century ago now, when this constituted an offensive, clumsily worded, clued-out gaffe on the part of a presidential candidate.

SOUNDCLIP

MITT ROMNEY: We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said “Can you help us find folks?” and they brought us binders full of women.

JD: Mitt Romney speaking during a presidential debate with Barack Obama on October the 16th of 2012. He was answering a question about pay equity for women by describing his efforts to hire women when he was governor of Massachusetts.
The sentiment was admirable. The wording was the problem. And, at the time, that was assumed to be one of the most baffling and tone-deaf things a presidential candidate would ever say about women.
We know. Now, if you can still hear me while you're sighing on the floor in the fetal position, I have interesting news. Those binders? They were real. And they still are.
One of Mitt Romney's former aides – an anonymous aide – has finally given those legendary binders to The Boston Globe. They are, and I quote, "two white three-ring binders, weighing in at an aggregate 15 pounds, 6 ounces...packed with nearly 200 cover letters and résumés, along with a few handwritten notations." Unquote.
So Mr. Romney was telling the truth, sort of. I mean, there were no actual women in the binders. But there was lots of information about actual women. It was indeed put together, as Mr. Romney said, by a coalition of Massachusetts women's groups, at his request. Then, someone got out the three-hole punch and methodically compiled all that information into two white, heavy binders.
Of course, it wasn't what he had done, but what he said about what he'd done.

[Music]

J. Geils obituary

JD: The first single by the J. Geils Band, it’s a cover of First I Look at the Purse, by The Contours. Not long before their 1970 debut album, they were called the J. Geils Blues Band. Although that might surprise you if you're only familiar with songs like say, Centerfold or Freeze Frame
Throughout the '70s, the group had a very devoted following because of their powerful live shows but they weren't really selling many records and that was frustrating to lead singer Peter Wolf, to the lead songwriter and keyboardist Seth Justman, and virtuoso harmonica player "Magic Dick."
Now, you may be wondering who exactly J. Geils was. Well, he was the guitarist. He loved blues. He loved jazz. He left the flashy stuff to his bandmates, but behind the scenes, he was the leader of the J. Geils Band. And in the late 1970s, he and the rest of the group started moving past blues rock, incorporating elements of new wave and pop. Which led, first, to the 1980 hit Love Stinks, and next, to the album Freeze Frame, which hit Number One on the Billboard charts in 1982.
So they'd finally made it. And then, almost immediately, they un-made it. There were arguments about their sound. Peter Wolf left. The next album went nowhere. And by 1985, the band had split up.
J. Geils was found dead in his home yesterday. He was 71. Since his namesake group broke up, he'd returned to his first love: blues and jazz. His concerts became more low-key, but he was still a hard-working musician, and he seemed happy with that.
As he once told an interviewer, "I often say at the beginning of the show, 'Welcome to our living room' because, if we weren't here, we'd be doing this anyway."

The first single by the J. Geils Band it's a cover of first I look at the purse by the contours. Not long before their 1970 debut album they

were called the J Geils blues band although that might surprise you if you're only familiar with songs like say centerfold or freeze frame throughout the 70s. The group had a very devoted following because their powerful live shows but they were actually selling many records and that was frustrating to the lead singer Peter Wolfe to the lead song reader and key writer rather and keyboardists set the adjustment and the virtuoso harmonica player Magic Dick. Now you may be wondering by now who exactly J Geils was. Well he was the guitarist. He loved blues. He loved jazz and he left the flashy stuff to his

bandmates. But behind the scenes he was the leader of the J. Geils Band and in the late 1970s he and the rest of the group started moving past blues rock incorporating elements of New Wave and pop. And that led first to the 1980 hit Love Stinks. And then next to the album freeze frame which hit number 1 on the Billboard charts in 1982. So they had finally made it and then almost immediately they made it. There were arguments about their sound. Peter Wolfe left the next album went nowhere. And by 1985 the band had split up.

J Geils was found dead in his home yesterday. He was 71 years old since his namesake group broke up. He returned to his first love being blues and jazz. His concerts became more low key but he was still a very hard working musician and he seemed happy with that as he once told an interviewer quote I often say at the beginning of the show. Welcome to our living room because if we weren't here we'd be doing this anyway. Unquote.

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April 12, 2017 episode transcript

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