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The AIH Transcript for August 17, 2017

Hosts: Mike Finerty and Robert Doane

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MIKE FINERTY: Hello, I'm Mike Finerty.

ROBERT DOAN: Good evening, I'm Robert Doane. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

RD: Tonight:

MF: They were strolling, shopping, thinking about where to eat. Now, at least 12 people are dead and dozens injured, after an attacker drove a van into a busy tourist area in Barcelona. A resident describes the carnage on his street.

RD: And it couldn't have gone worse, but he hasn't thought better of it. James Demore was fired from Google for writing a memo arguing against the company's diversity policies. But instead of retracting it, he's proving intractable.

MF: Obstacle course. After a Quebec border mayor says he wants a wall built to stop illegal crossings from the U.S., the province’s Immigration Minister does her best to chip away at his concerns.

RD: Doing the bear minimum. A First Nations chief in British Columbia tells us why the provinces ban on the controversial practice of grizzly bear trophy hunting is a long-awaited victory.

MF: Turn around, bright eyes… or you'll scorch your retinas. Hard to say which will be the more powerful phenomenon on a Caribbean cruise next Monday: the moon performing a total eclipse of the sun, or Bonnie Tyler performing “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.

RD: And… nailed it! Unfortunately for Doug Bergeson of Wisconsin, what he mailed was his own heart with a nail gun, but fortunately, he was able to drive himself to the hospital with a nail stuck perilously close to a major artery. As It Happens the Thursday edition. Radio that guesses it was probably his left anterior descending artery, but that's beside the point.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Part 1: Barcelona attack, Quebec immigration, nail in heart

Barcelona attack

Guest: John Ward

RD: As we go to air tonight, at least a dozen people are dead and 100 injured following an attack in Spain. Earlier today, a van plowed through a crowd of people in a busy tourist area in central Barcelona. Officials say two people have since been arrested. John Ward lives in the area where the attack happened. That's where we reached him earlier today.

MF: John Ward, hello.

JOHN WARD: Hello Mike. How are you?

MF: Well listen, we're fine here, but we're concerned about what's going on there. What can you see? What can you tell us?

JW: I live on La Ramblas, which is a long boulevard stretching from Placa de Catalunya and it finishes the statue of Columbus, near the sea. And it's about a mile-and-a-half or something like that. And I live half way down. And that is where the white van has ended up. So as I’m standing on the balcony of my apartment here, I can quite clearly see the van that was involved in this incident and sadly, a corpse next to it. That's confirmed because I just watched a policeman pull the blanket back and I saw it with my own eyes. So what happened today, there was a lot of shouting and screaming and bawling as you could well imagine. I'm not sure at this stage you probably know more than I do where the vehicle entered La Ramblas, which is a pedestrianized boulevard with traffic either side: one-way traffic going down on one side and one-way traffic going up on the other. So I don't know where it entered the Ramblas, but I know where it's finished. And I can see it made contact with a news kiosk, which is just to my left, which sells newspapers magazines and touristy stuff. Now, it's obviously made contact with that and unconfirmed there at least two corpses by there and there's one opposite by a flower store, which it also demolished. And it's come to rest half way down La Ramblas. If you look at a map or a picture or something you can pull it up, there's a circular mural thing and it's parked right on top of that.

MF: You've described a scene where there are a number of people who appear to be dead. You called them corpses…

JW: I'm afraid that's what I suspect, although it's unconfirmed at this moment.

MF: So in total how many can you see?

JW: I can see four.

MF: At the time of day this happened, can you describe what La Ramblas was like?

JW: Well, it's the middle of August. It's the middle of the busiest tourist season. It’s never quiet here. And from Placa Cataunya down to the sea, there would have been several thousand people wandering about.

MF: And so La Ramblas right now compared to before the attack, how does it look right now? What's going on around the scene?

JW: There's nothing happening right now. As they say in America, we're in lockdown. So nobody's going anywhere. There is still a heavy police presence, especially around the van. There has been some forensic visits. I can see circles around items of interest on La Ramblas. And, of course, we've still got these deceased people that are still in situ.

MF: How safe are you today?

JW: I was fine today. You know I went out this morning, I met a friend for lunch, came back and I was back I suppose an hour and then all hell let loose. So I was very lucky to be inside rather than just you know 20-meters from my front door. That could have been me down there.

MF: Have you thought about that?

JW: Not very much.

MF: Well, because and you said it, La Ramblas is about wandering around. And I imagine you spent quite a lot of time wandering up and down?

JW: Well yes, I mean there it is. I mean I cross it several times a day and you know about my normal business. It's if I want to go across and get a bicycle, I go across La Ramblas. If I want to go over to the cathedral, I go across La Ramblas and back again. If I want to get a newspaper, I cross La Ramblas. You know that's what we do. So I thought about it too much I would be a bit concerned, but thankfully, I was indoors and it all happened while I was here.

MF: I mean do you think it sunk in and the consequences?

JW: No it hasn't. It hasn't sunk in. It's sort of surreal. I'll tell you something now. When I first looked out, and I saw what was unfolding, I thought Cool! They've got a very elaborate exercise going on here to test the emergency services. And then it soon dawned on me that it actually wasn't an exercise and it was for real. So that was the response of the emergency services, which was amazing. They were literally here within a few minutes.

MF: And how do you think it's going to change the way you and the others who live in Barcelona go about your daily lives?

JW: Me personally, it won't change me. My wife and I sort of discussed it and we said it's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when. If you look at the pattern that has evolved over the last few years, am I surprised this happened? Not really sadly. Am I surprised it happened today? Yes. Is it going to affect me personally? No. I'm going to carry on best I can because I don't know how else to carry on really. People in London going across Westminster Bridge, they carry on the best they can. So that's what we're going to do.

MF: John Ward, thank you for speaking to us.

JW: OK Mike, it’s a pleasure. Bye bye.

MF: Bye bye.

John Ward lives in Barcelona’s La Ramblas district, where today's deadly van attack took place. We reached Mr. Ward earlier today for the latest updates on this story, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Quebec immigration

Guest: Kathleen Weil

RD: Roland-Luc Beliveau has seen enough. The network TVA is reporting that the mayor of Lacolle, Quebec is calling for a border wall to prevent people from jumping the border from the United States. Mayor Beliveau made the proposal on the same day as a Canadian Border Services Agency gave an update on the surge of asylum seekers crossing illegally into Quebec. 3,800 People, most of them Haitians, have arrived in the first half of this month alone. That's twice the rate from the month before, and 30 times what it was at the beginning of the year. This morning, Quebec’s Immigration Minister, Kathleen Weil, joined one of her federal counterparts to announce a series of measures aimed at alleviating some of the pressure. We reached Minister Weil in Montreal.

MF: Minister, hello.

KATHLEEN WEIL: Hello. Hello.

MF: So the mayor of Lacolle feels that some sort of barrier with barbed wire is the way to go to stop people crossing away from the legal border crossing. He's not the only one who has a problem with it. What's your message for the mayor?

KW: Well, I was asked that question today. Essentially, it's a federal government message, it's our message. There's no question of building walls or anything across any part of the border. People could easily get in somewhere else. So, essentially, once people step into Canada, they become legitimate asylum seekers and this is you know under the Geneva Convention. So the federal government certainly was reassuring the mayor around security measures and health measures also that are taken to make sure these people are in in good health, and they are. And, essentially, that all of the organizations that are working at the border are working in sync. And then, of course, for the Quebec government, it's very important that we be able to work with the federal government to make sure that our own services are adjusted.

MF: One of the opposition leaders, Francois Legault, has been calling your approach irresponsible, that this open-armed approach that you've just described actually sends a bad message to the migrants. He says the way you've been speaking about the influx of migrants amounts to an invitation to rush the border. What could you be doing differently to dissuade them?

KW: Well, he's been called irresponsible as a political leader by a number of people because it shows a complete misunderstanding or lack of knowledge or an intentional effort to dis-inform people. He must know the Geneva Convention. He must know how these things work. So that's where our premier called him irresponsible because political leaders have to be above the fray. They've got to use the right language. They have to explain to people why Canada and, of course, Quebec plays the role that it does. The most important point is the security check that is done and the federal government reiterated all the measures that they took. There's no concern there. And there's no sense at all of a crisis.

MF: OK, but would you like to see the influx of refugee claimants stop?

KW: I had made a number of requests from the federal government for the last few weeks. One was that they do what's called a triage at the border, so that those who are destined for other places, namely Ontario, can be directed to Ontario. So they are doing that now. So that's in process. I'd also ask that they speed up the asylum requests. So one is are they admissible as asylum seekers? But it gives them the temporary work permit and also access to the federal health program. So they announced 20 new agents today, so that’s very important for us.

MF: They say they are working on it…

KW: But I just want to mention that why I'm satisfied with the announcement today is that they've also opened up a new center in Cornwall, right?

MF: Outside of Quebec.

KW: The other important element that they've added in these measures that they announced today they're doing a very important, robust campaign to inform people that it's not obvious that you're going to get your status as a refugee.

MF: Well, that's the thing, isn’t it? Because they're coming here under false pretenses and I know that you realize that by now. Because you, as we have been talking to these people who've been crossing the border, and they come looking for a better life and they have this conviction many of them that they're not risking deportation. We had one on the air last week who said [Speaking: French] translation: Canada is a country of the gods. We won't be deported. There are false Whatsapp messages going around the expat community. They're coming with a big risk and they could end 8-10 months down the road being sent back and that would be horrible for them.

KW: Yes indeed, and Marc Garneau announced today a major mobilization of Canadian consulates in the United States and ambassadors at embassies as well in other countries to really give a clear picture of the criteria you need to make your case. And that is an independent process, but it's a difficult one. There's no automatic acceptance, so that message is getting out there. I think it's being well-received.

MF: Minister, can I ask you a question about the divisions that this is causing within Quebec society? We've seen banners go up in Quebec City along highways. People are opposing the influx of immigrants or migrants I should say. And you have, of course, you know what we've heard from the Lacolle mayor about putting up some form of a border barrier. How concerned are you, as Minister of Immigration and Diversity and Inclusion, that this influx is actually feeding divisions over immigration and identity in Quebec?

KW: It's a very important issue. It's a very important issue and that's why both the federal government and our government have to be communicating constantly. Reassuring people about the process, certainly the security process, understanding what our obligations are under the Geneva Convention…

MF: Is that working because it sounds like the voices opposed are rising and not going away?

KW: We have some mayors though and we're getting calls of mayors that want to help out. I've seen a lot of people volunteering. Not just from the Haitian community, but lots of people volunteering, donating toys for the children. You’re right though, we have to be attentive to that concern. They watch the TV; they see people coming through the border. It's creating worries and concerns, so we're out there communicating. We have to go really on the ground and do a lot of that work. That’s where we’re asking for the other political parties to really use the appropriate language to not frighten people. Because if we're going to get through all of this together, and we will, we have to have the right tone and the right words and I think the population has to see us at work. And we are on a daily basis communicating, working together, hand-in-glove and that we're following it closely and we're able to adjust as it goes.

MF: Kathleen Weil, thanks very much for speaking to us.

KW: Thank you very much, Mike.

MF: Bye bye.

KW: Bye bye.

RD: Kathleen Weil is Quebec’s Immigration Minister. We reached her in Montreal.

[Music: Ambient]

Nail in heart

Guest: Doug Bergeson

RD: Standing on your tippy-toes while operating a power tool probably not a good idea. That's especially true if that power tool is a nail gun… fully loaded with three-and-a-half inch framing nails. When he was installing a fireplace at his home earlier this summer, Doug Bergeson learned that the hard way… the extremely hard way… and the hard-to-believe way. Luckily for him, he's now recovered from his injury and returned to work at his farm. We reached Mr. Bergeson in Peshtigo, Wisconsin.

MF: Doug, hello.

DOUG BERGESON: Hi.

MF: What exactly were you doing with the fireplace that things went so badly wrong?

DB: I was doing some screaming and it was kind of in an awkward spot and I wasn't quite ready for the nail gun to go off. And it fired once were wanted and once where I didn't want it to go.

MF: You said it was an awkward spot — an awkward position — could you describe it?

DB: My arm was over the top of a two-by-twelve. I was nailing, of course, towards me.

MF: You were nailing towards you! The gun was pointed toward you?

DB: Yes, but the two-by-twelve was on the other side. So I had a two-by-twelve between me and the gun. And I was just nailing the bottom of the two-by-twelve and it doubled fired. And the second time the gun dropped down a little bit and the nail came out, ricocheted and caught me right in chest.

MF: Straight into your chest?

DB: Yes. When it hit, it felt like a nicked me and I looked down and I didn't see anything. So I took my other hand and pulled my shirt down and put my hand there it's like oh, this isn't good at all.

MF: You could see, obviously, the head of the nail and how much was sticking out?

DB: About an inch.

MF: And how long was the nail?

DB: Three-and-a-half-inches.

MF: So that's a lot of nail that's on the other side of your chest.

DB: Yeah. Yeah. I know my wife says I can only use inch-and-a-quarter nails now.

MF: OK, so how clearly are you thinking at that point?

DB: I thought I was thinking pretty clearly. I put the nail gun down and sat there's a couple of minutes to assess the bad thing I did, it wasn't too bad. And feeling my chest to make sure that there is no pressure building up and that I felt fine. And I'm just thinking this is not going to be a good day, I'm going to have to go to the ER for this one.

MF: A lot of us might have called 911.

DB: Well, for one thing, I don't like to bother people if I don't have to. I felt pretty good other than you know the pain from the nail being in there. So I cleaned up and I did think about calling the rescue squad. But where I live, it would probably have taken them 20 minutes to get there. So I thought well, I’ll just drive myself in.

MF: What was the drive like?

DB: It wasn't too bad for the first few miles and then it started getting pretty painful, a pretty sharp pain. I've got a three-quarter-ton truck, so it picks up all the bumps in the road. And about eight miles into it, it was kind of like yeah, I'm ready to have this taken out.

MF: Is it true that you could you could see the nail twitch a bit when your heart beat?

DB: Yeah, that's when I decided I've got to go to the ER.

MF: So what happened when you arrived there?

DB: Well, I found a good parking spot and walked up to the ER and the there is another patient at the reception desk. So there was a security guard in there also. So I just leaned over and told him I says I've got a nail in my chest. I'm just going to sit down here if you can find somebody to help me out that would be just fantastic. It only took about a minute and I had three people helping me out.

MF: Doug, how did they get it out?

DB: They did that down in Green Bay. They didn't have a heart surgeon on staff. So they had to send me down to Aurora Bay Care down in Green Bay. The doctor, before surgery, said well, we're going to have to cut your chest open and I was astounded that they were going to have to do that. I asked them isn't there a different direction you can go through for that? He says we can try going through your ribs, but depending on what kind of damage you have, we might have to cut your chest open anyway. I says do what you have to do. I’ll wait here.

MF: That is a traumatic surgery having your chest opened up like that. At that point, are you starting to get a bit worried?

DB: No. I mean I felt OK, just I had removed something that shouldn't have been there.

MF: So they put you under?

DB: Oh, certainly. They let me push the syringe to put me out. They told me to push it fast though.

MF: Yeah. At this point, things needed to be sorted out and the sooner the better. What's the next thing you remember?

DB: Waking up in the recovery room. Of course, they came in and took my vitals and checking me over and I think the doctor got a kick out of me also. I don’t know why?

MF: He was pretty worried though at a certain point that this could have been a lot worse for you. How close do you think you came to dying? What did he tell you?

DB: Well, he had a piece of paper in his hand and he said I don't know if you realize how close it was. He said I'm not talking about a millimeter, I'm talking the thickness of this sheet of paper and you had about three minutes left. It right next to one of the arteries, I don't know which one?

MF: That's a sobering thought.

DB: Yeah.

MF: How are you feeling after all this? Have you got a new lease on life? Or has this slowed you down? What's going on?

DB: Well, I've got an equipment repair business. I repair a lot of heavy equipment, I farm, plus I work full-time. So it's going to put me behind a little bit there and I've got to be careful with what I do now. Anybody that uses the nail gun much usually they've got a story to tell about a close call or something and it was an eye-opener.

MF: What happened to the nail?

DB: Well, my wife wanted it back. We've got that sitting at home in a specimen bag.

MF: Doug, really glad to hear that you're well and now you're back at work. And thank you very much for telling us the story.

DB: All right, sounds good.

MF: All the best. Bye bye.

DB: Bye bye.

RD: Wisconsin's Doug Bergeson. He accidentally shot himself in the heart with a nail gun. Still don't believe us? We've got pictures to prove it on our website, just go to: www.cbc.ca/aih.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Google: James Damore, grizzly ban hunt

Google: James Damore

Guest: James Damore

RD: James Damore wrote a memo. He called it “Google's Ideological Echo Chamber”, and shared it internally at Google, where he worked as an engineer. It went viral, first inside the company, then outside it. In the document, Mr. Damore claims that the representation gap between men and women in tech boils down to biological differences between the sexes. He claims that thanks to biology, women have more, quote, “neuroticism.” Unquote. are more agreeable and are more feelings-oriented versus ideas-oriented. He then argues against gender and racial inclusion efforts at the company, labeling them discriminatory. Well, the memo caused an uproar. It also caused Mr. Demore to be fired from Google. But he says he was fired for telling the truth. We reached James Demore in Mountain View, California.

MF: James Demore, hello.

JAMES DEMORE: Hey.

MF: You say you were fired for telling the truth. What does that mean?

JD: I was trying to actually use science to help address the diversity problem, but that was considered forbidden truth and I was fired for it.

MF: And you see what you outlined as the truth because the truth is not often the term that scientists would probably use?

JD: Yeah. I mean, obviously, truth is just a more concise term for scientific consensus or something like that.

MF: Do you still see it as scientific consensus because I mean I'm sure you've been reading, probably pretty widely on all of this, and even one of the psychologists behind one of the studies you cited, David Schmidt, disputes how you used his research. I mean how much of that expert criticism have you taken on board?

JD: Yeah, I've looked at a lot of the criticism and much of it is either attacking something that I didn't say like differences in math ability between boys and girls, which I don't talk about at all. Or talking about how we shouldn’t apply this to individuals, which is exactly what I mentioned multiple times in the document.

MF: Well, he said that the differences that you were citing tween the sexes are actually pretty slight across the whole population and that applying them to the population of workers at Google is not really a good thing necessarily to do.

JD: Yes, definitely some of the differences especially in some of the personality traits are small. The differences in interests between people versus things though are actually quite large.

MF: So do you still see the 10 page memo as the truth?

JD: Yeah, I haven't seen anything that actually disputes the validity of it.

MF: Except what we just mentioned for instance.

JD: So he's more just nit-picking on how large the difference and neuroticism is in the workplace. I mean yeah, I wasn't trying to use that as any causal link. Why I brought up neuroticism, which is just for example one's proneness to anxiety, was because we saw higher levels of anxiety among women at Google and we were attributing that to sexism.

MF: But you know that scientific process, people coming up with conclusions in, quote/unquote, “science”. There's a way that's done, it's published, it gets peer reviewed. None of that happened with this memo.

JD: But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge a lot of scientific findings. And I'm not the first one to point out the differences in interest in people versus things among men and women and the effect on occupational interests.

MF: No, but they are cherry-picked from different places and put together in a memo. It's not peer reviewed. It's not what you call science in it. If you've studied that you know that.

JD: I did study science. I was doing a Ph.D. at Harvard on much of the same stuff.

MF: What was the point?

JD: I saw a lot of problems in Google's culture and problems in our policies that were really hurting our culture and increasing intergroup tension.

MF: Hurting what culture specifically? What's the problem you are trying to address?

JD: Google has a very strong dogma that is intolerant to differing opinions and even evidence in this case. So that alienates anyone that doesn't hold to the progressive party lines. There are these blacklists between managers, even shared between different companies, where they'll say I will never work with you because of your political opinions.

MF: But do you have any evidence that anyone is actually being harmed by the diversity policies that you were critical of?

JD: We've seen this in academia. It hasn't been studied at Google in particular, but there have been studies in academia where these programs that really emphasize group identity increases intergroup attention and causes one to think of themselves as a victim and contribute to these zero sum type conflicts between different groups.

MF: But there's no there's no evidence at Google that it's harmed the company. You're in the realm of supposition.

JD: It hasn't been proven one way or the other. This was an internal document that I was sending to the diversity programs to help improve things.

MF: One of the conclusions in your memo reads like this: “Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women's representation among the homeless in work related or violent deaths, prison and school dropouts. I have to confess I just don't understand what you're trying to get at there? Why is discriminating to have more women in tech equivalent to having more women living homeless or dropping out of school?

JD: Because many of the same forces that are causing those disparities, the same forces are causing the disparity that we see in tech. And so if we're not willing to address one disparity, then I don't know why we're focusing so much on this other disparity?

MF: Well how about because women are more than half the population and that it's probably good that there are females well-represented in the tech force?

JD: There are females in the tech force.

MF: Properly represented.

JD: And discrimination against women is not happening at all. There is open and encouraged discrimination against conservative thought though.

MF: So there's no discrimination against women, but there is discrimination against conservatives at Google?

JD: Yes, there likely is.

MF: But no discrimination whatsoever against women?

JD: It hasn't been shown, no.

MF: And has it been shown against conservatives?

JD: I mean there are many cases of this within Silicon Valley. And there are lawsuits against multiple companies about this.

MF: And there is also a lawsuit against Google right now about the pay gap between men and women.

JD: Yes and their official internal response is that once you control for all the factors, including performance, there is no gender pay gap.

MF: And you believe that part of what they say, but not the other parts of what they say? I mean you're totally closed to the idea that there might be any discrimination against women at Google?

JD: I'm not closed to it; you just need to show it.

MF: Your photo for your Twitter account has “GOOLAG” G-O-OL-A-G in the end the kind of “Google style”…

JD: Right.

MF: Do you really see it as a gulag?

JD: I think that if people are going to call me a Nazi, where I've been expressing completely centrist views, then calling a corporation that holds a leftist dogma and is completely intolerant of anyone that holds a differing opinion. I don't think it's that large of a stretch to make analogies to communism.

MF: Well, It's not just an analogy to communism. It's an analogy for camps where people were tortured to death.

JD: We need to be honest with ourselves about the dangers that communism had. There are still many professors that profess how great communism is. And we as a population have this huge negative connotation with Nazis, which I agree with, but we don't have that huge negative connotation with communists. We really need to acknowledge that there are huge disadvantages to that type of ideology and that just having it dogmatically oppressive is a horrible thing.

MF: You see Google as communist?

JD: An authoritarian, left-wing ideology. And there are many people at Google and their comments on my document were basically communist. They wanted no way to differentiate between people. Equal outcome of everyone.

MF: This is one of the most profitable companies in the world… communist?

JD: They're tolerant of that ideology, yes.

MF: You re-tweeted a picture of yourself with the caption: “Not all heroes wear capes”. You see yourself as a hero?

JD: Yeah, I re-tweeted someone else's tweet. I liked that tweet and it had my picture on it.

MF: Why did you like it?

JD: I don’t necessarily see myself as a hero though. I’m just someone that is courageous enough to stand for something.

MF: James Demore, thanks for speaking to us.

JD: Thanks a lot.

RD: James Demore is a former engineer with Google. We reached him in Mountain View, California.

[Music: Industrial]

Australian AG

RD: Australian Senator Pauline Hanson does not like the burka. Not that she wears one. Usually. But today, the leader of the right-wing One Nation party showed up to the Senate chamber dressed from head to toe in the black garment. She then proceeded to dramatically pull it off, proclaiming that the burka should be banned, quote, “In light of what is happening with national security.” Unquote. Australian Attorney General George Brandis had something to say about that. And it seems he may dislike Ms. Hanson’s choice of clothing even more than she does.

SOUNDCLIP

GEORGE BRANDIS: Senator Hanson, no, we will not be banning the burka. Now, Senator Henson, I'm not going to pretend to ignore the stunt that you have tried to pull today by arriving in the chamber dressed in a burka. When we all know that you are not an adherent of the Islamic faith. I would caution you and counsel you, Senator Henson, with respect to be very, very careful off the offense you may do to the religious sensibilities of other Australians.

[Sound: Much jeering]

GB: we have about half-a-million Australians in this country of the Islamic faith. Now, Senator Hanson, for the last four years, I have had responsibility pre-eminently among the ministers subject to the prime minister for national security policy. And I can tell you, Senator Hansen, it has been the advice of each director general of security and that each commissioner of the Australian Federal Police that it is vital. That they work cooperatively with the Muslim community. And try to ridicule that community. To mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do and I would ask you to reflect on what you’ve done.

[Sound: Much clapping]

RD: That was George Brandis, the Australian Attorney General, responding to right-wing Senator Pauline Hanson’s decision to wear a burka today in the Senate chamber.

[Music: Ambient]

Grizzly bear follow-up

Guest: Doug Neasloss

RD: He wants to see fewer grizzly bear head mounted above fireplaces. And if a new ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting is any indication, Doug Neasloss might just get what he wants. Mr. Neasloss is the elected chief for Klemtu in B.C.’s Great Bear Rain Forest, and a member of the Coastal First Nations. Under the NDP government's new policy, which comes into effect later this fall, grizzly bear hunting will no longer be permitted in the Great Bear Rain Forest. In the rest of the province, hunting grizzly bear for meat will be permitted, but no trophy hunting. Earlier this week, we spoke to the head of the province’s Guide Outfitters Association, who strongly opposed the ban. For the opposite view, we've reached Doug Neasloss in Vancouver.

MF: Doug Neasloss, hello.

DOUG NEASLOSS: Hello, Mike.

MF: What impact do you think this ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting is going to have? I guess specifically on the Great Bear Rain Forest first of all?

DN: Well, we're extremely excited. This ban supports our culture. I mean something that we teach our young is to have respect. When you go hunting or fishing, we're taught to utilize and not waste anything. And we saw this trophy hunt doing the exact opposite. We’ve seen people from overseas come up and shoot these bears, chop off their heads, take the fur and leave the rest of the bear there to rot. You know that's a violation of our culture and our practices.

MF: How often do you see that?

DN: In the early 2000s, believe it or not, we saw it more often than not. You know we run a bear-viewing operation in my community. And we’d be out trying to view bears and you know quite often we’d come across dead bears with no head and no fur. So that was a very common thing. It slowly started to change after we declared a ban in 2012, as Costal First Nations. It was banned on Indigenous law and that slowly started to decline. But every now and then, a half.

MF: We spoke earlier in the week to Scott Ellis, who's the executive director of the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. And he says that the decision — the ban on trophy hunting — is all about, quote, “Emotion, rhetoric, politics and votes”. What do you think of that?

DN: Well, you know I think you know the NDP, or just any government in general, are there to represent the pulse of the people. And 91 per cent of British Columbians opposed to the trophy hunt and wanted it banned. And I think you know times have changed and I know hunting groups will, obviously, try to defend it as much as they can. But this has had a huge impact on communities and basically no revenue going back to local communities. So to me, I'm really happy it's over.

MF: Scott Ellis also told us that he feels that the trophy ban is wrong-headed, especially in that, scientifically speaking, there's no threat to the grizzly bear population. Here's what he told us. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

SCOTT ELLIS: You know our harvest is not that high. You know we're between 80 and 100 bears spread across a million-square-kilometers. If the bear population is healthy and growing, why not allow a harvest?

MF: What about that?

DN: I think it sounds a bit crazy to me. I mean this trophy hunting industry has had huge impacts on a number of fronts. Not just a violation of our culture, but a violation of our economy. I mean we've been trying to build long-term sustainable tourism industries and we're dealing with these guys. We could be in the same river trying to view bears and on the other side of the river, trophy hunters could be trying to shoot the same bear. You know they've had some huge impacts and I think if you look at the numbers, tourism generates more revenue and, basically, there are four companies in the Great Bear Rainforest that hunt bears and they employ a total of 11 people, compared to the 56 ecotourism operations that employ about 560 people. Trophy hunting and resident hunting combined only made $1.1 million, where ecotourism made $15.2 million. So you know I don't think the numbers lie.

MF: But that's the economic analysis. On his narrower point about the grizzly bear populations, which he says are healthy and growing and it's not an endangered or at risk species, is he wrong about that that the populations are healthy and growing?

DN: Well no, I mean it depends on where you are. I mean there have been huge declines in some parts of the province. So you know to tell the truth, it's just not enough science out there to tell what the populations are. Basically, we found out very quickly that if someone sitting in Victoria is looking at these habitat modules and they fly over two rivers, count the bears and then extrapolate those bears from those two rivers and extrapolate through all of British Columbia. So you know to me, I don't think they have accurate numbers in terms of what their population is. I mean 10,000 bear could die tomorrow and they wouldn't know at all. You know and I live in the Great Bear Rainforest. I live right in the very heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. I’ve been watching our systems for 20 years and not once have I ever seen any government bear biologist doing any bear research. So as a result, that’s left a huge void. We do bear research and I can tell you in our bear research we've been at it for six years and there’s not nearly as many as people say there are.

MF: How do Coastal First Nations view the grizzly and I guess how did the elders view the grizzly?

DN: well, in our culture, there's a lot of respect for bears. I mean our people had to learn to live with bears a long time ago. Sharing the same rivers, sharing the same estuary, our elders always say if you’re ever lost in the woods, eat everything a bear does, except dung cabbage. And you know in our culture, bears have the ability to take off their fur and become humans. So it was a very close ties between people and bears. But we’re just taught to respect to everything in general.

MF: So trophy hunting in your view, why is it wrong? I mean you talked about it being disrespectful. Why essentially is it wrong?

DN: It's just this archaic practice that I just don't think you need to go there and shoot bears. I mean I just I don't understand why people do it?

MF: Well, Scott Ellis told that there is a heritage to it. That trophy hunting is about heritage and there is a strong tradition of it goes back you know decades — more than 100 years — of trophy hunting and taking trophies of the animals that have been killed.

DN: Yeah, I think you know First Nations have heritage, you know? And we were taught how to respect. You know to me, I think people should evolve. You know my community has evolved. I mean no one in my community eats bears. You know like slavery used to be legal a long time ago and now the same people have evolved from that. So I think this is one of those things and one of those industries that people are starting to speak out. I mean 91 per cent of British Columbians oppose the hunt.

MF: Have you ever eaten grizzly?

DN: Never. No, I don't think I've ever been that hungry to eat a grizzly bear.

MF: And do you know anyone in your First Nations communities on the on the West Coast who have?

DN: No. None of our communities eat bears. Maybe it happened 100 years ago, but you know I think people evolve with with many other things to eat.

MF: Doug Neasloss, thanks very much for speaking to us.

DN: Thank you.

MF: Bye bye.

RD: Doug Neasloss is chief counselor for Klemtu in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest, and a member of the Coastal First Nations. We reached him in Vancouver.

[Music: Ambient]

Polaris: Feist

RD: In an interview before her latest album, “Pleasure”, was released. Leslie Feist talked about the song she chose to put last. It's called “Young Up”. She told Stereogum, quote, “A phrase like young up came to me because I literally got to a point where I’d become so stiff by repetition you get ground down by you tendencies and routine was aging me before my time.” Unquote. Those remarks apply to her approach to the whole album. It sounds different from her previous work: it’s sparser, more stripped-down. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot going on. You just have to listen a little harder to catch it all, and then listen again. “Pleasure” is one of ten albums shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, awarded to the best Canadian album of the year. It's the third time Feist has made the shortlist. In 2012, she won for her last album, “Metals”. In that same interview, Leslie Feist said, “I feel like these are songs that I wrote for a version of myself that I aspired to be.”

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August 17, 2017 episode transcript

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