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The Current Transcript for January 22, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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DONALD TRUMP: Your organization's terrible. Don't be rude. Don't be. No. I am not going to give you a question. I am not going to give you a question. You are Fake News.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It has been a year of presidential outbursts as protocol, rules of political engagement, and common courtesy were ignored, tweeted out, trounced by Donald Trump. At times there has been a lot at stake from the Russia investigation to the ongoing paralysis affecting thousands of government jobs today. At other times even with much at stake like hurricanes, opioid overdoses, and secrecy over national security, the U.S. president and the media that covers his every breath have been consumed by the seemingly trivial. In half an hour our eye on the media looks at a year of covering Trump as another year of covering Trump begins. Also today, repatriating the Rohingya.

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VOICE 1: If we are sent back where we came from where people are still fleeing—it is as if they are sending us to be brutally killed.

AMT: Myanmar and Bangladesh have just postponed an agreement to begin repatriating the Rohingya refugees now crowded in squalid camps on their border. But how could that have worked when some are still fleeing and the very Myanmar military accused of attacking them and destroying their communities would be in charge. We've got a reality check on the whole process in an hour. But to begin, as Indigenous young people see so many of their peers taking their own lives, they want a voice in how to change things.

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VOICE 1: I'm tired of this—I don't want to ever lose somebody from suicide again—it's very hard to find out a person you love for or care about or someone in the community that took their own life.

AMT: With Indigenous youth converging in Ottawa to meet with social media giants and government officials, we will hear their concerns. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'We Matter': Indigenous youth raise their voices in the fight against suicide

Guests: Tunchai Redvers, Chloe Dixon, Cory O’Soup

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: In Northern Saskatchewan the suicide of a 10-year-old has devastated a community.

VOICE 2: A 170 teens are being closely watched amid talk of a suicide pact.

VOICE 3: And I think that is the question that our community is asking today. When is it the right time? When is it the right time for this government to act?

VOICE 4: A remote Northern Ontario First Nation has declared a state of emergency after a series of suicides. There has been in fact at least 20 suicides.

VOICE 5: Yes, the government may announce initiatives, but sadly they are just dragging their feet while we continue to bury our loved ones.

AMT: Those are just some of the all too familiar headlines of reports of suicide amongst Indigenous youth in Canada. From the First Nation of Attawapiskat to Lac La Ronge in Saskatchewan to the Wapekeka First Nation in Northern Ontario—youth suicide is a reality that has devastated families and communities. Governments, both provincial and federal, continue to discuss what needs to happen to stop this wave of suicide. But yesterday in Ottawa, a different kind of discussion was launched. Seventy young people from across Canada joined together for a two-day summit they're calling a Hope Forum, organized by Facebook and the We Matter Campaign. Tunchai Redvers is one of the organizers of the forum. She's Dene and Metis and the co-creator of the We Matter Campaign. Also joining us is Chloe Dixon, a 17-year-old student who grew up in the Eden Valley reserve in Alberta, and now lives in Turner Valley, Alberta. She's attending the Hope Forum. Everyone's in Ottawa. Hello.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Hello. Good morning.

AMT: Tunchai Redvers, I just want to ask you, what goes through your mind every time you hear about another young Indigenous person who has died by suicide?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: It's at a point where it's just—it's overwhelming. The amount of people and families and communities who are affected by this issue—and it gets tiring, frankly. And people are tired of losing the people that they love. Every single day you hear of a new loss and it's just tiring. It's exhausting.

AMT: What's the We Matter Campaign?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: The We Matter Campaign is a national multi-media campaign that I started with my brother back in October 2016. We gather video messages of hope, of love, of positivity from Indigenous role models from across the country in the form of video messages. And these videos communicate to Indigenous youth who may be struggling or are going through a hard time that no matter how hard life gets, there is always a way forward. So we launched this campaign in October 2016 and within a month of launching, we reached over a million people through our social media feeds, and it just blew up really quickly. And now we've been around for just over a year. So we are a registered non-profit organization. The social media campaign—we are doing a number of other resource creation and community outreach across Canada.

AMT: It's important for people to know they matter, isn't it?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: It is extremely important for people to know that they matter.

AMT: Chloe Dixon, why did you join the We Matter Campaign?

CHLOE DIXON: It was a great opportunity for youths, especially me. It was an inspiration for me to join a campaign that was—who was a part of me. All youths matter. And it is time for change. That's what I'm here for. It's time for you to finally use a voice and that's what I've been working on in my community.

AMT: Tell me more about the Eden Valley reserve, Chloe. The most pressing issues that young people face.

CHLOE DIXON: They face a lot of addictions and they don't really see their role models.

AMT: And do you find that connecting with other people through We Matter gives you an idea of what else might be possible?

CHLOE DIXON: Yes.

AMT: Tunchai, what role do you want Indigenous youth to play in addressing the whole issue of suicide in your own communities?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Well Indigenous youth—they shouldn't be the ones burdened with this issue. They shouldn't be the ones who have to fix it or manage it or balance it because this issue shouldn't exist. And so it's up to the government—federal and provincial—it's up to indigenous governments, to communities, and to the general public, to address this issue. And so often that burden, it does fall on Indigenous youth. And right now, it's peers, it's family members, and it's friends. Those are the people who are dealing with this on a daily basis, and those are the ones that are being turned to for support. And so what we're doing with the Hope Forum is we're trying to provide tools and resources that youth can take back to their communities because the reality is that they are the ones managing or addressing this issue. And so in order to do so, we think that there are specific tools and resources that can help them in that. But ultimately it's up to everybody to address this issue.

AMT: I guess a lot of people talk about the Indigenous youth facing this issue and not to them, and that's kind of what you're trying to do in Ottawa, right? You want people to hear you.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Exactly. And so often in this national discussion around Indigenous youth suicide, you hear leaders talk, and you see the headlines. They come out so often. But what is missing in all of these conversations in the media—in media articles—it is that voice of Indigenous youth. And they're the ones experiencing this. We're the ones dealing with this and they know what they need in the communities. They know what their friends need. They know what their family members need. It's just a matter of lifting up those voices and not just listening to Indigenous youth, but really hearing them. And hearing what they have to say and taking the value in the solutions and insights that they provide.

AMT: Well Chloe, talk to me a little bit about how you want to help people struggling with mental health issues who think about suicide. What have you seen around you?

CHLOE DIXON: I just seen a lot of really negative opinions going around. And it's not really helpful in my opinion because people who really want to take their life—it's hard to explain. But all I try to do is give them positive impact and tell them that you have a life to live. And you can change. I can change. People have changed all over the place where they come from a bad environment. But they do end up changing. And I tell them that there are other youth out there who are struggling more, but they are fighting through it. And so…

AMT: You've seen people who have taken their own lives. Who you're close to.

CHLOE DIXON: Yes.

AMT: What has that left you thinking?

CHLOE DIXON: It just left me thinking I could have helped them—like the safe [unintelligible] did yesterday. I could have saved their life. But, it was their choice and it did really make a big impact on me.

AMT: You sound like you almost blame yourself for something. That you could have done something. Do you feel that everybody can help? Is that what you're saying? Like everyone in a community can help everyone else if you get the right tools to do that?

CHLOE DIXON: Yeah. If they go through the training like we did yesterday, we could have helped that person not take their life and they would still be here. And I do blame myself because I did not go talk to the family member.

AMT: Tunchai, you've face this up close to.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Hm. Among the Indigenous young population or just the Indigenous population in general, we all have been affected in some way by suicides. And for example, yesterday as one of our activities at the Hope Forum is we had everybody stand up and swap places if they had lost a loved one to suicide. And there were over 70 people in the room and every single person stood up, every single one. There wasn't one person that didn't stand up who had not lost a loved one to suicide. In a room of over 70 people to know that every single one of them has lost someone to suicide.

AMT: It's a pretty stark scene.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: It is.

AMT: Just to see them all stand up. And Tunchai you have teamed up with Facebook to create the forum that's underway now in Ottawa. How important is social media in getting information to your fellow Indigenous youth?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Social media is a really powerful tool if it's used in the right way. And social media can be used for a lot of negativity. But with that We Matter Campaign we're creating a space of positivity, of hope, of love, of support for Indigenous young people. And Facebook has been this incredible partner in almost like a perfect example of an ally, in that they are uplifting us as an organisation. And really they're uplifting Indigenous young people in supporting this Hope Forum. This Hope Forum wouldn't have been possible without them and without their support. And it's just amazing.

AMT: I have a clip I'd like you to hear. This is Kevin Chan, who is the head of public policy for Facebook Canada. Here's one of the tools Facebook is providing to help users who may be expressing suicidal tendencies.

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KEVIN CHAN: Any post you can actually report it if you come across it and feel that the person whose post it is is in distress. Then we can do a couple of things. One is we can offer suggested language that the person who reported the post can use, and take and modify to reach out to the individual. We also offer a product where someone can actually report to post anonymously. The next time the distressed individual logs into Facebook they are greeted with a message an interstitial that pops up and says, 'hey someone in your friend network who cares about you is concerned. They wanted you to know that and you have access to resources.' And then directly on the platform. We have a bunch of resources and tips and also connections directly to phone lines.

AMT: Tunchai Redvers, has this kind of intervention proved useful?

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Absolutely. We've been to communities where—actually we did a PSA in partnership with Facebook back in August, where we put out a couple of public service announcements. And there were youth a part of that, who had actually been flagged—their posts have personally been flagged by family members and that has helped them.

AMT: Of course there are a lot of communities where they can't get connectivity. That's a problem too. Depending on the community.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Yes. There are quite a few northern communities where Internet connectivity is fairly poor.

AMT: This just underlines how important it is to get it.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Absolutely.

AMT: Chloe, what do you hope that We Matter achieves in this meeting? What do you want to see change? What do you want the government officials to hear?

CHLOE DIXON: I would like the youth voice to be heard and their opinions on everything. It would be nice to have a youth opinion on everything that's going on right now in this modern day because there's a lot of issues going on. And it needs to be dealt with. And their voices need to be heard for sure because some communities don't have a voice at all and it would be nice for those communities to finally come out and have the voice and speak up of what they've been through.

AMT: And for the help that's available, are there enough people helping who understand what your communities are going through, Chloe, do you think? That really understand.

CHLOE DIXON: No, they don't. Because my community isn't on the map anymore. And I'm trying to get my community back on the map and get their voices heard because my community is struggling a lot right now with addictions and suicide rates. And I just want my community back on the map.

AMT: Okay, thank you both for talking to me today. And I wish you well at this conference as you go forward and tell your stories and try to help others.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Thanks very much. And if I could say one last thing, I just want to say that suicide is a multifaceted issue and it does really link back to that colonial history in Canada. And as much as we are focused on these dire issues, there is so much strength and there is so much hope in young voices. And that's what this Hope Forum is all about, is that really moving forward in a good way.

AMT: Well thanks for letting us hear your voice today.

TUNCHAI REDVERS: Merci Cho. Thank you.

CHLOE DIXON: Thank you.

AMT: That is Tunchai Redvers. One of the organizers of the Hope forum in Ottawa. And Chloe Dixon, a 17-year-old student who grew up in the Eden Valley reserve in Alberta, and now lives in Turner Valley, Alberta. They're both in Ottawa for this Hope Forum for Indigenous youth. Cory O'Soup is Saskatchewan's first Indigenous Advocate for Children and Youth. He's also in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

CORY O'SOUP: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: So as you listen to my last two guests, what are you thinking?

CORY O'SOUP: I think that they are bang on in exactly what they're saying. We've talked to over a thousand youth in Northern Saskatchewan and they're saying exactly the same things that both Chloe and Tunchai have said.

AMT: So you personally, you visited 12 Northern Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan to hear directly from young people about the root causes of suicide. What did they tell you?

CORY O'SOUP: We spent over a year visiting 12 communities. And the youth in the North told us a number of different things. Some of the things that we know and some that we really don't know. But they talked about issues around bullying and cyberbullying, around substance misuse, drugs and alcohol. They talked about lack of emotional support. They talked about not feeling safe in their communities. They talked about not having enough diverse activities. And they talked about emotional and mental health and wellness, and the lack of those things in their communities.

AMT: When we talk about the lack of those things, what are the challenges? What specific things are needed that aren't there?

CORY O'SOUP: Well when it comes to those different things, a lot of those supports and what the youth are saying is they're calling their parents and their communities to action when it comes to most of the things that they're saying. So when they talk about bullying and cyberbullying, they're not talking just about youth bullying other youth. They're talking about adults in the community and professionals in the community bullying them as well. So when it comes to a topic like that we just can't put it in programming for youth bullying youth. We need to put in programs for adults bullying youth. And that's something new that came out of this conversation with the youth.

AMT: Do you think Facebook can potentially play a role in preventing suicides amongst this demographic?

CORY O'SOUP: In my experience the only way that we're going to reach youth and truly reach them in this generation is through social media. And I think Facebook can play a huge role in that.

AMT: And what do you want to see then come out of what they're saying at this conference?

CORY O'SOUP: It's exactly what we did in Saskatchewan. I want the youth voice to be heard loud and clear. We're using our platform at the Advocate for Children and Youth office in Saskatchewan to make sure that that voice is heard. And we created a report specifically around their voice and around the topic of youth suicide. And we did research all across the country and all across the globe actually. And one of the biggest gap in the topic of youth suicide research was youth voice and youth engagement.

AMT: I have a clip I want you to hear. This is Sheila north. She's the Grand Chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents Northern Manitoba First Nations. Last year she helped launch mobile mental health crises teams that can be deployed into communities without adequate mental services. And the workers on these teams are Indigenous. Listen to her.

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SHEILA NORTH: It's important that they are Indigenous because they have a better understanding right off the top of the situation that they are being called to help in. And that means sometimes the language is there already so they are able to communicate in their own Indigenous languages with their teams. And also understanding the community and some of the nuances that each of the different individual communities have. So our teams are able to respond better to cultural norms than people coming from outside of our communities are responding to them.

AMT: Cory O'Soup how important is that?

CORY O'SOUP: The most important thing that we can do is we can help ourselves as Indigenous people. And I truly believe that we have the ability, we have knowledge, and we have the experience to be able to find those solutions within our communities and that our people are able to walk into our own communities and work with our youth and work with the people there to find those solutions. So I agree with that 100 percent.

AMT: Justin Trudeau came into office promising to reset relations with First Nations. What should the federal government be doing differently on this front?

CORY O'SOUP: We did make some of our calls to action directly to the federal government even though we are a provincial office. They need to support what's going on in the communities. All of our communities are working on this issue. They're creating strategic plans. They're creating different programs and initiatives and I think the government needs to step in and provide support, provide resources, and provide dollars, as we continue to come up with these solutions. Even the one that's going on here in Ottawa, there's going to be solutions coming out of that. And I believe the federal government has to stand up and listen, and put their money where their mouth is.

AMT: Going to be a lot of new young voices that are going to come out of this meeting.

CORY O'SOUP: You know our youth are amazing. They're inspirational. And if you actually take a look at our report and see the things that they have to say, I myself, I'd change the way that I parent my own children, just by reading and listening to what they had to say over the last year.

AMT: Okay. Well, Cory O'Soup thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today.

CORY O'SOUP: Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Cory O'Soup. Saskatchewan's Indigenous Advocate for Children and Youth. He joined us from our Ottawa studio. By the way, if you or someone you know is thinking of suicide and you need help, please reach out. We are posting information about suicide helplines on our website at cbc.ca/the current. Stay with us. The CBC News is next. Then, hot on the heels of his so-called Fake News Awards, we're asking just how good a job the news media has done covering year one of the singular presidency of Donald Trump. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/the current, on podcast, and on your radio app.

[Music: Bridge]

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'Desperate Housewives of the White House': How has the media covered Trump's first year?

Guests: Daniel Dale, Jay Newton-Small, Victor Pickard

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonte and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, a repatriation agreement poised to return Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar, back to Myanmar, has just been put on hold. It was raising many concerns and doubt. In half an hour, we are asking about the implications of all of that. But first, jumping into the shallow end of the media pool.

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DONALD TRUMP: We are saying Merry Christmas again.

[Sound: Crowd cheers]

VOICE 1: Making Christmas great again.

VOICE 2: Why does Hope Hicks the director of communications have to steam the presidents pants?

VOICE 3: Candidate Donald Trump was always half in the bag. Bag of McDonalds. Hot and ready and on time, it was a stressful thing.

VOICE 4: Kellyanne, woman to woman. What do you think about the mainstream making such a big deal about Melania's shoes instead of focusing on the flood victims?

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Yeah, if we take a look... we saw...

VOICE 5: Forty-four pass the hour. The results from the presidents physical are in.

VOICE 6: Sanjay correct me if I am wrong but you did see some troubling signs when you looked at the data. Let me put up for everybody. There is this thing called the calcium.

VOICE 7: Right over there is your hotel.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah that's right, isn't that beautiful?

VOICE 7: It is a beautiful hotel. Did you ever sit in the Oval Office at the resolute desk and say, 'you know what, if I was over there I would have a cheeseburger.'

DONALD TRUMP: Well I don't really but I will tell you...

AMT: From cheeseburgers to Melania's shoes. As we pass the one-year mark of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, there has been plenty of media attention focused on the little—some might say—silly things. Of course, there's also plenty of attention paid to weightier matters related to how President Trump governs, including the Russia investigations, the tax overhaul, the current government shutdown.

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VOICE 1: What we have just witnessed on the floor was a cynical decision by Senate Democrats to shove aside millions of Americans for the sake of irresponsible political games.

VOICE 2: Blame should crash entirely on President Trump's shoulders. This will be called the Trump shutdown.

AMT: Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, playing the blame game this weekend. Lawmakers spent the weekend searching for compromise to end the government shutdown. It's now in its third day. And though there is hope that a deal can be reached later today, tens of thousands of government employees have been told to stay home. This weekend also saw women's marches in cities across the U.S. and the world, including in Canada. An echo of what happened after Mr. Trump's inauguration last year.

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VOICE 1: This has been the most heartbreaking experience of my adult life, that this man is our president.

VOICE 2: I'm an immigrant myself, and my husband, well he was born here, and my children, to teach them that being different, it's a beautiful thing.

VOICE 3: Well I'm here for the ah, the Dreamers and just everybody and get rid of Trump.

VOICE 3: Silence is complicity so we need to be here so that people understand that we're pissed off.

AMT: Well one year into the Trump administration we're asking where the emphasis of media coverage should be and how to balance the trivial with the serious. We have three guests waiting to share their thoughts. Daniel Dale is the Toronto Star's Washington correspondent. He's in D.C. Joining us from Nashville, Tennessee is political commentator and Time Magazine contributor Jay Newton-Small. And Victor Pickard is a professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He's the author of "America's Battle for Media Democracy "—and he's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hello everyone.

DANIEL DALE: Hello.

VICTOR PICKARD: Hello.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Good morning.

AMT: Daniel Dale, let's start with you. What for you were the journalistic highlights of the first year of the Trump presidency?

DANIEL DALE: Well I think the investigative reporting we've seen has really been top notch, world class. We've had incredible reporting about what's going on with the Russia investigation and what in fact the Trump campaign did in relation to dealing with the Russian government. We've had really deep looks at the impact of Trump policy. We've had inside looks about what's going on in basically the president's head and in his White House. So I think there's been a lot of questions about journalism in this era and the changing media landscape. But I think a lot of journalism has been fantastic.

AMT: Victor Pickard, what do you think? How do you assess the media coverage of President Trump this past year?

VICTOR PICKARD: Well, I agree. But I would say overall it's been a mixed bag. I do agree there's been a lot more investigative reporting. And there's a longstanding critique of professional journalism in the U.S. for its over-reliance on official sources being overly deferential toward political ledes. And I think what we're seeing during the Trump era is that this norm has largely gone out the window. News media outlets are now much more willing to challenge official narratives, call out the president on lying, and so forth. So I think that's a good thing to see them becoming more adversarial. Yet I also think there is still much room for improvement. I think too often the news media are trivializing very important issues.

AMT: Jay Newton-Small, what do you think? First of all, where did the press shine in the first year of covering President Trump?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: There's definitely a really different feeling in Washington covering this presidency versus covering the Obama presidency, or even when I covered George W. Bush's presidency, where there was still a sense of, 'you needed these people,' right? You needed them down the road. You couldn't really burn any bridges because you might need them for sourcing for another story and you had to be careful. You didn't want to get kicked out of doing stand ups and what they call "Pebble Beach," which is sort of an area within the White House grounds where you television and radio often do their stand ups from with the White House as a backdrop. You might get kicked out from there, and you have to get up from Lafayette Park, which is the park in front of the White House where there's tons of public surrounding it, if things got really acrimonious. And these days there's just this "no prisoners" sort of approach to covering the Trump White House. You have colleagues of mine who overhear conversations and report on them from top White House officials and lawyers. That's really unprecedented. And it's a very different feeling covering this White House than other White Houses. I would say that things are very hostile for this particular White House and there's a lot of great coverage that way. But I would also say that there is this sense of loss of decorum and loss of civility, where everything is almost too hostile. It's like a kind of game of "gotcha" that goes on all day long. And that is also to be lamented in many ways.

AMT: And Jay Newton-Small. What stories made you feel ashamed of your profession this year?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Like I said—I don't want to call out too many of my colleagues—but there are certainly one for example one where it was based off of people overhearing two Trump lawyers talk at a restaurant. And I think that, you know, is that fair game? I don't know that eavesdropping on somebody's conversations is necessarily the way you want to go. And certainly, I think it's not something I would have done. I would have said, 'hey I can hear you guys. And this is fair game.' But like, you know, if they keep talking and then sure I would probably report on it.

AMT: But then they'd know that they were on the record, essentially, 'cause you would listen.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: I remember for example being in Waco, Texas and one reporter had a room that was adjoining to a room where Karl Rove was. And Karl Rove was having a conversation about sensitive issues in the Bush White House, and he actually knocked on the door and said, 'hi I'm a reporter. I can actually hear what you're saying. Just want to let you know that.' In this day and age that would never happen with the Trump administration. People would just go ahead and listen in. Go ahead and report on what's being said. And there's just not that sense of decorum and incivility that used to exist between a White House press corps or journalists and the government.

AMT: Daniel Dale, what do you think the low points were?

DANIEL DALE: Well I think there's still been a great unwillingness to call out Trump's serial dishonesty—serial lying. I think the media has become slightly bolder. But there seemed to be a moment in the 2016 campaign where it seemed like there was going to be a real sea change. The New York Times among other outlets were using the word lie for the first time in headlines. CNN was calling Trump out in the captions or put up the word at the bottom of the screen. I think that has largely receded. Fact-checking has still largely been relegated to occasional moments to dedicate a fact-checkers rather than being a hallmark of coverage. I think also there's been a surplus of coverage on Trump voters. There's sort of this cliched story now, 'Trump voters in coal country or the Appalachians or some pro-Trump place, they still love Trump.' But we know that's true by now. I think given where the country is at which is a large majority as opposed to Trump, we have huge liberal energy people, taking the streets. I think there's still been a relative shortage of what's going on this year, which is that side of the spectrum. And I think we can occasionally get too distracted by the sort of reality show part of this. I mean it's irresistible. But I think we can fail on occasion to delve deep into some serious policy change because we are distracted intentionally or unintentionally—I usually argue unintentionally by something Trump is tweeting or saying.

AMT: Now Daniel Dale you really have gone out of your way to fact-check the president a lot. How difficult is that? And what's the fallout of that for you? Is there a fallout? Or is it a good reaction?

DANIEL DALE: Well, it's a challenge. But not because it is very difficult journalism. But because it just takes so long because he says so many things that are not true. So it's more of an endurance test than a skill test at all. And he says the same things over and over, so it can be deflating when you're checking the same thing every Sunday night. The reaction has mostly been good. I have a lot of people thanking me which is unusual, saying 'they really appreciate information.' I also do get a bunch of pushback from people who are more sympathetic to Trump saying, 'what's the point? Other politicians have lied or we know he lies. Write about the good economy. Write about something positive. Or write about the false things that Justin Trudeau is saying. So there are people who aren't fans of it. But I think the response has mostly been positive.

AMT: Victor Pickard, what do you think as you listen to these to go through some of these issues?

VICTOR PICKARD: Yeah, I agree with many of the points they're raising. And just to mention a couple. I think it's still a problem even though there is this kind of surface level, adversarial posture towards the president, which is a good sign in general. But still the media far too often are dictated by whatever Trump's most recent tweet was that morning. So there's a lot of emphasis on his controversial statements and there's not enough digging in around the substantive policy issues. For example, looking at really what the Republican tax bill is going to do for everyday Americans. How is this going to contribute to growing inequality in the United States? And even right now the government shutdown, there's sort of a fall back on these old norms of false equivalence, "He said, she said," without really trying to ascribe too much blame. So I think there's been improvement and there certainly has been a new found appreciation for the fourth estate over this last year. But I still think that we need more deeper substantive policy coverage.

AMT: And at the same time, can they really ignore those tweets? The president of the United States is putting himself on the record. He's spending his time putting himself on the record on trivia. Doesn't that tell us something? Isn't that something important for the public to know?

VICTOR PICKARD: Oh, absolutely. And we need to see critical coverage of that. But we also need contextualization. We need to be able to really show that this tweet just completely threw off the news narrative for the next 24 hours and we've already forgotten about the last scandal from two days ago. So I agree. They can't be ignored. But I think we could try to regain some perspective.

AMT: I've got a clip that I want to play. It really is where the trivial meets the traumatic. This is President Trump after Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria. He visited the island. He was filmed tossing paper towels into a crowd of people. This is what he had to say about it.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: They had these beautiful soft towels. Very good towels. And I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people. And they were screaming and they were loving everything. And we were... I was having fun... and they were having fun. They said 'throw them to me throw them to me Mr. president. So the next day they said, 'it was so disrespectful to the people.' It was just a made up thing.

AMT: Jay Newton-Small, he wanted the press to cover that moment. What did you make of that whole scene?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Donald Trump is incredibly good at sort of, I would say, wagging the dog in many ways. In the sense that, every time we should be talking about something that's incredibly serious like Hurricane Maria, which has devastated Puerto Rico, it still has devastated Puerto Rico. It's something we don't even talk about. I think almost half of the island still doesn't have power and it's been months and months and months since the hurricane. And these issues get lost in what is so much more about style over substance. And he for example—the number of weekends where we've been on television talking about his tweets, where instead of talking about really serious issues about the Russia investigation or his failure to repeal Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act as that Democrats call it., we end up talking about Mika Brzezinski's face lift who is sort of hostess of morning television and on cable TV. Or we end up talking about the sort of, what I call the Desperate Housewives of the White House, where everybody watches with bated breath about who's in and who's out. Is Anthony Scarmmouchi in? Is Reince Priebus out? And what does everyone really think about Steve Bannon? Is he friend's with Trump or not? And all of that is completely—actually—meaningless. And has very little to do with actual policy or governance. And I think the media does get too lost in Donald Trump throwing soft towels in Puerto Rico instead of actually talking about the serious issues going on in Puerto Rico. And that's been a problem throughout, not only his presidency, but also his campaign.

AMT: Daniel Dale...

DANIEL DALE: Well, that's sort of a classic difficult case for us. On one hand, Trump tossing towels is not a serious policy issue. On the other hand, I wrote about that myself, because so many Puerto Ricans were deeply offended by his conduct and they thought that it spoke to his attitude toward them and toward Hispanics more generally. And that attitude was one of the reasons that the response in their view and many experts view was so insufficient. And so they thought that that little moment said something about his character and about his presidency. And so it's hard to balance the sort of the policy dives and writing about these Trump moments because a lot of the presidency is performance, and that's what a lot of people think about when they think about Trump. And so I don't really know the answer.

AMT: Victor Pickard, what do you think? Well I think, again, that if we could only spend more time looking at some of the structural factors behind you know—to throw out one problem in the United States growing inequality. What is driving this? What are the policy decisions or indecisions that are making this worse. We just don't really get a lot of that in-depth coverage, historical analysis, looking at how other countries are handling problems such as, global warming. There are so many pressing issues. And unfortunately Trump is taking up all the oxygen in the media sphere. So if we could just find ways to use Trump as a hook to get at some of these deeper problems.

AMT: And I want to ask about that Victor because I mean we are talking about there is really impressive investigative work going on at the same time as the coverage of the tweets and the other stuff. Is it also what the public chooses to remember? Or what the public chooses to scan? Some of that stuff is there for the asking if you want to watch it, listen to it, read it, right?

VICTOR PICKARD: You're absolutely right. I mean there's always going to be a tension between what the public wants and what they need. And ideally in a democratic society, we would be paying attention to these needs as well. It's very hard to do. The U.S. news media system has been devastating. We've lost over 40 percent of news staff over the last decade. And we have a very weak public media system. Unlike Canada, we only pay per person about a $1.50 per year to support our public media. So we have a lot of structural problems in our news media system and it's very difficult to provide the kind of journalism that a democracy requires.

AMT: And there are often mixed messages coming from the Trump administration. We saw this with his Chief of Staff John Kelly, saying that the president had changed his attitude on the border wall. But then the president comes out and disagrees with that. Sometimes in terms of trying to cover it. Like all the regular rules of what somebody says and then contradicted, they kind of go out the window, don't they? Jay Newton-Small what do you think?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Yeah, I mean I sort of I agree with that. That it's very confusing. You don't know who to trust. You don't know who to believe and who Trump undermines, not only what his staff is often saying but often what he himself has said within hours of saying it. And so it is very lurching and that's part of his strategy is that he likes to keep people off balance. He likes to be unpredictable. And he sort of thinks of that as a way of negotiating. And it is very hard because you don't have the staff you once side. I mean when I first started travelling with the White House under George W. Bush, I was with Bloomberg News, and we had a staff of five people covering the White House full time. Time Magazine used to have a staff of two people covering the White House full time. Now it's down to one person. There isn't the news budgets to do this full time and that at a time when it's so important to have more and more people out there. And the reality TV presidency, where ratings has become so much more the name of the game. People are voting with their eyeballs. But if you let them vote with their eyeballs you're always going to get BuzzFeed kind of cute puppies and kittens lists and how to build a cat hut out of a hanger and T-shirt kind of thing.

AMT: Or you're going to have people yelling at each other, like the cable news programs are all panels. You don't see a lot of people going out into other parts of the U.S. and showing you the opioid crisis. They've got four people or eight people lined up to yell at each other.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Exactly. International coverage is never going to make money. It never has made money. And every time we put international conflict on the cover of Time Magazine, that's losing us money. But we feel that it's important that people know about this and it's going on. So unfortunately we can't—it's very hard to reconcile the demand to make money in news and the public trust of delivering people news that is important that they know.

AMT: Daniel Dale, as a reporter for a Canadian newspaper and you're the only one there for your paper. How do you cover things differently? What kind of choices do you have to make?

DANIEL DALE: Well you ignore some of the stuff that's big news in the U.S. For example I'm not really covering at all the government shutdown which is a huge topic for Capitol Hill reporters. But I really have nothing useful to add and I don't think it's huge news in Canada. I think one of the good things that it does being a Canadian here is that it gives me the liberty to say stuff that many U.S. reporters are unwilling to say. For example, about Trump's lying. We don't have Republican advertisers for example pressuring our publisher to tell me to stop doing that. And so there's a level of freedom I think that you have as a Canadian to cover it as you would another foreign country where you're sort of dispassionately but frankly telling it how it is.

AMT: Victor Pickard I'm wondering how much does the public view of things affect how Washington correspondents can hold the president of the United States to account. We've seen push back on this already. What are your thoughts on that?

VICTOR PICKARD: Yes, certainly the public pressure certainly dictates some news routines. But I would say, even larger and we've already been hinting at this are the commercial pressures. I mean whether we're talking about newspapers or digital journalism or cable television, they are all being dictated by commercial pressures where they have to capture attention and sell that to advertisers. And I think that logic is driving, at least indirectly, drives a lot of the news coverage. And that's something that ideally we could try to get around whether we create a new public media system or try to reduce these commercial pressures. I think that's a problem for U.S. news media.

AMT: Wasn't it the head of CBS who said Trump was really good for business?

VICTOR PICKARD: That's right. He said it might be bad for America, but it's good for CBS. I think that captures the logic that is driving a lot of American news media.

AMT: But at the same time both the Washington Post and the New York Times have said that their subscription numbers have gone up specifically because of the kind of reporting they're doing—the investigative reporting they're doing. Have they not?

VICTOR PICKARD: That's also true. And there's been a Trump bump. So it has helped the larger news outlets. But lot of our community newspapers, small city newspapers, they're are still hurting.

AMT: Well so let me ask you Daniel Dale, as you sink your teeth into a second-year under the Trump presidency, what do you anticipate for your own coverage? Where do you want to go with this?

DANIEL DALE: Well when I got here it was the end of the Obama era. And I spent much more time going outside of Washington and writing about things going on in America. So I spent a week in Massachusetts reading what the heroin crisis. I spent a week in Milwaukee writing about continued segregation. And so I hope that this year I can do more of that rather than sort of feeling stuck here covering the Trump show. But I'm sort of doubtful that I'll be able to. I mean this is the biggest and best for journalist story in the world. And with the midterms coming up, there will still be a lot of politics happening. In short, I'm hoping to get out more and slightly reduce the focus on Trump. But I don't know if it's going to be possible.

AMT: Okay. We have to leave it there. Thank you all three of you for weighing in on all of this.

DANIEL DALE: Thank you very much.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Thanks.

VICTOR PICKARD: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with Daniel Dale. He's the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star. He's in Washington. Jay Newton-Small is a contributor to Time Magazine and is a political commentator. She's in Nashville, Tennessee. Victor Pickard is an associate professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined us from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stay with us. In our next half hour, we're going to hear from a family doctor who has major reservations about prescribing medical marijuana. We'll hear his concerns. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Bangladesh postpones plan to send Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar

Guests: Nahlah Ayed, Samantha Nutt, Dr. Brian Hart

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. In Bangladesh, along the border with Myanmar, Rohingya refugees continue to pour over. Reuters has reported that at least 100 Rohingya Muslims have crossed over into Bangladesh in the last few days alone. Just as tens of thousands more have since August, fleeing what the United Nations has described as a classic case of ethnic cleansing. The refugees continue arriving despite a repatriation agreement that was put into place in the fall. And under this deal, Bangladesh is to return as many as 680,000 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar within two years. Those repatriations were supposed to begin tomorrow. Now that's been postponed according to the latest news reports. Rohingya refugees who have made it to the camps in Bangladesh such as, the woman you're about to hear have said they feared what would happen if they had to be forced back.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: No we won't go back, not under these circumstances, we have been persecuted and brutalized there. They took all our possessions our crops and cattle we would rather die here then go back under these circumstances.

AMT: Well the new repatriation agreement that has now been postponed always seemed a bit suspect to its critics, given what the refugees are actually fleeing. Nahlah Ayed is the CBC's foreign correspondent based in London. She was at a Rohingya refugee camp—more than one—in Bangladesh in September at the height of the movement of so many. And Nahlah joins us from Winnipeg today. Hi Nahlah.

NAHLAH AYED: Hello good morning.

AMT: Can you remind us what sort of conditions people are living in there?

NAHLAH AYED: Well we're talking about an environment that's essentially, exceptional hardship. There are enormous refugee camps and there are several that are interconnected that we saw—both the formal and informal kind. The informal ones, we're talking basically the side of the road here, where they were just bleak. First there is just the sheer number of people living together. There's unsanitary and dangerous conditions in what's essentially a jungle. They're at the mercy of the weather. Soon it's going to be cyclone season again by the way and the housing is less than basic. Most people that we met were still living with just plastic sheeting as their only protection and they're totally reliant on aid agencies for handouts for food, for clothing, for anything you can imagine. And just as the authorities have feared actually just even recently with the crowding and the unclean surroundings and the lack of clean water, the open sewers, they have led to disease, including diphtheria. And there's concern about [unintelligible] as well. So it's a population, back then and now too, that's mostly women and children. They exist without schooling, without major health support that they need that would allow them to live anything resembling an ordinary life.

AMT: So given all of that, what did you think when they first announced there was an agreement to get everyone to go back?

NAHLAH AYED: Well the extraordinary thing Anna Maria is that every single family we spoke to had a very similar story concerning their destroyed villages, their destroyed homes, lost belongings and livelihoods, fields that were left unharvested. So the first question that I had that came to my mind was, what are they going back to? There's a physical and practical sort of aspect to that. So where will they actually physically go once they make it through the transit camps that are supposed to house them at the border? What homes will they be living in or what villages will they inhabit? But also whether they will feel safe. Every single family we spoke to also had horrific stories of violence, of murder, of rape that people are still coping with. They say that those were perpetrated by the authorities, by people in uniform, whether it was the military or the police or militias that were siding with those organizations. So how secure will they be when they return? What guarantees do they have or exist or have they been given to ensure that they don't go through any more violence?

AMT: And so what would the politics have been behind this idea that they actually thought starting tomorrow they could start sending people back?

NAHLAH AYED: Well Myanmar has been as under international pressure to act, to do something. And Bangladesh has been quite vocal about the need for help in coping with this influx. Again the latest numbers just this past weekend 688,000 people who have come with essentially nothing. That's on top of the numbers that were already in the country. So there was pressure for both sides to do something. Now the big issue at the heart of this is what changes if and when these people go back. Because in addition to the violence that they just lived through, there's also the matter of their status. We've heard a lot and I heard directly from many refugees who talked about a lifetime of persecution. They are denied basic rights of movement for example. Some say they are denied rights education or practicing their religion. They're denied citizenship. They're among the biggest group of stateless people in the world. So thousands of Rohingya who are in Myanmar right now, who actually ended up in refugee camps after earlier bouts of violence, are still living in those refugee camps. And they don't have rights of movement. So the question is again, how to deal with that situation. What happens to those people when they go back? And will it be enough to meet international standards because as you mentioned at the beginning there is a lot of criticism of this plan because it has been opaque, because it didn't also include the involvement of organizations like the UNHCR—the U.N. refugee agency—to ensure as the secretary general said that they do meet international standards of people going back home.

AMT: Nahlah, does anyone speak for the Rohingya collectively?

NAHLAH AYED: We have not come across one organization or one group of people who does that. We've spoken to people both on the ground and in the U.K., in Canada and other places, who do speak for them. And I personally like to hear what the people on the ground are saying. And what they were telling us at the time is that despite the violence they've been through, despite all that happened, they do want to go home. That they feel that Myanmar is their home. Generations that they have been there despite claims to the contrary. But at the same time, now when you consider as I say all that they've been through sort of how can they go back if they don't know they will be safe there.

AMT: And they can't go home right now and they're living in places where they can barely survive.

NAHLAH AYED: Exactly.

AMT: Not many options.

NAHLAH AYED: Not at all. And when you think about, again, the fact that the population is mostly women and children and very young children that we saw, if the outside window here of people being sent back to Myanmar is two years; so we're talking about children who will spend the next two years of their life—this is a minimum probably probably longer—without the kind of schooling and support that they need. What kind of future can you really provide to children like that? And never mind the health issues that affect the population.

AMT: Nahlah, thanks for your insights.

NAHLAH AYED: You're welcome.

AMT: Nahlah Ayed, CBC foreign correspondent based in London, England. She's joining us from Winnipeg today and she was in the camps where the Rohingya are on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in the fall. Samantha Nutt is the founder and executive director of War Child Canada. She's an assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto. She's in our Toronto studio. Hello.

SAMANTHA NUTT: Good morning.

AMT: I want to ask you the same thing. We know this deal is postponed. This was an overnight news story, actually, it was supposed to start tomorrow. But the very idea of this deal, what did you think of when you first heard it?

SAMANTHA NUTT: I want to echo what Nahlah said. I mean the idea that this could happen right now under the current context, it was absolutely outrageous. And it would have exposed thousands of already vulnerable people to potentially grave abuse and neglect and hardship and possibly death as well. Particularly in an environment where there were no plans that were being put into place to make sure that they actually had safe passage, that there were monitors in place, that UNHCR was on the ground, and that there were people who would be able to independently bear witness to this kind of transition. I think it was poorly thought out. The plan was poorly executed. And the secrecy around it was very worrisome indeed.

AMT: It's worth underlining that. That nobody would be able to go back and monitor to see actually how this was unfolding in places that we are told have been totally destroyed.

SAMANTHA NUTT: And that's absolutely right. And the Burmese government has deliberately complicated and refused entry for international observers, aid organizations who would have been able to monitor this kind of major transition. And let alone—Nahlah touched on this as well—people don't have villages to return to. They don't have land. They don't have livelihoods. They don't have really anything at all. So you're taking a population that is traumatized, displaced, impoverished, in some cases medically unwell. You've got children who are particularly vulnerable. And the idea was to send them back. But to what? And what services would be available for them? And what kind of access humanitarian aid workers would have? These were all major, major questions that hadn't been resolved. And that were a recipe for complete disaster.

AMT: And even though the negotiators didn't seem to recognize that, certainly anyone with loved ones there did. I've got a clip I want you to hear. We reached out to Anwar Arkani. He came to Canada in 1998, and founded the Rohingya Association of Canada. Three of his siblings are in refugee camps in Bangladesh today. Listen to what he told us.

SOUNDCLIP

ANWAR ARKANI: When the initial bilateral agreement was signed I was still in the refugee camp on November 23rd. As soon as this sign was done and news was out we did some interviews with the camp residents, including my own siblings the next day November 24th, and everybody said why don't they kill us here? Why are they just playing with us with our lives? If we are sent back where we came from where people are still fleeing, it is as if they are sending us to be brutally killed.

AMT: Pretty well sums it up there.

SAMANTHA NUTT: Absolutely. Yeah. And there were ominous pieces about this arrangement where the Burmese government was suggesting that when people arrived, they were building essentially displaced people's camps that would house tens of thousands of these returning refugees. And you can only believe that that was some kind of strategy to contain and control this particular population. So in many instances they weren't even being invited to return to their ancestral homes. They were being invited to return to an environment where they would be contained, controlled, heavily monitored, and where they would exist at the mercy of the Burmese government which as we know has been -they've been under attack as a result of that regime now for many decades.

AMT: They were also being told that if they wanted to go back voluntarily, they would have to provide some kind of documentation to prove that they actually had lived there that they were from there.

SAMANTHA NUTT: Which is an impossible task because they're considered stateless. And so they are not recognized as citizens by the Burmese government. We see this around the world in refugee camps where people arrive even if they have come from a country in which they might have identity papers and they arrive and we saw this in Syria. People are fleeing their homes. They're leaving everything behind. Then trying to establish your place of birth and your right to return is incredibly difficult. So the Rohingya are not alone in this. But their challenges were unique and much more serious than what we even see in other difficult context.

AMT: Even if they had identity papers to be able to...

SAMANTHA NUTT: Even if they had them. But they were not allowed to be citizens.

AMT: Yeah, and so was there ever an idea that would have worked?

SAMANTHA NUTT: To me, absolutely not. Not under the current context. Not without changing the level of access and independent monitoring so that these refugees would have safe passage home. And also working concertedly to resolve this. To have some kind of peace and reconciliation process, for example at the community level. To ensure that they can return to their homes. Return to their livelihoods. And be safe. And have the rights that they are entitled to under international law.

AMT: At the same time Bangladesh has a problem. There are a lot of people on its border living in terrible conditions. What should the international community be doing in this? Can they get close to helping them or not?

SAMANTHA NUTT: They can get close to helping them. It would require a massive infusion of humanitarian relief in terms of aid dollars and other forms of support. We see this again in other contexts around the world. For the government of Bangladesh it's a very difficult situation to confront because the more sort of programming that is available to refugee groups and the higher the standard of living, then the less likely they are to ever return. That puts a lot of pressure on the government within Bangladesh to continue providing services which are expensive and time consuming. So there's always that tension between how much is too much in terms of service and how much is not enough. What we know right now is it is certainly not enough and it's not enough for the foreseeable future given that we have more than a million refugees living in very dire circumstances. At the same time we really need to make sure that they have the necessary support. But I think that this whole idea of moving them at least within the foreseeable future under the current context and given the hostility that they're facing with the Burmese government it's just an impossible question.

AMT: We've certainly seen around the world refugee camps that have become so permanent that they are home to generations of people.

SAMANTHA NUTT: And we saw that with the first round of Rohingya refugees that came in the 1990s that are still in Bangladesh. And we've seen this in other environments around the world. You've got many people who are stateless. Who will spend upwards of a decade-plus in a refugee camp because they have no home to go back to. We're seeing some of these tensions in the Syrian context as well that there's pressure within Jordan camps and elsewhere for those refugees to return. What are you going back to? Homes that were destroyed? Lives that were destroyed. No opportunity. No services. And the risk that your government will continue to attack you and discriminate against you.

AMT: Have we seen any kind of a refugee return in the past that's actually worked like a huge one like that?

SAMANTHA NUTT: We certainly saw in the 90s. We saw Liberian refugees for example living in Ghana and other refugee camps who slowly began to return and UNHCR put into place measures to allow for that kind of transition and aid organizations are very good at doing that. We also saw that after the 2001 war in Afghanistan, where Afghan refugees who were living in Pakistan slowly started to return. But again major issues around proving things like what was your home and proving that you owned it, that you owned the land. In a lot of cases in war zones all records are destroyed. And so you end up in a situation where there can be a lot of local tension, animosity, and resentment. And so that transition can be extremely complicated and it needs an intensive amount of support to happen properly.

AMT: In other words those of us in countries that don't face this need to step up.

SAMANTHA NUTT: We do. And Canada for example has only committed 35 million over five years in terms of assisting Rohingya refugees on the ground in Bangladesh. And that's really in the scheme of their need. Not a huge amount of money.

AMT: And of course again we've seen Rohingya repatriated to Myanmar from 1992 to 2005. Two hundred thousand sent back from Bangladesh. How do you break the cycle? What needs to happen?

SAMANTHA NUTT: Well what needs to happen is the Burmese government needs to really put in place a proper process for acknowledging the Rohingya as citizens of their country. Making sure that they have services. That their needs are being met. And they need to have a peaceful resolution to this crisis. But so far we have not seen any movement on that front whatsoever.

AMT: A lot of displaced people around the world right now.

SAMANTHA NUTT: Massive. I mean we're facing the worst refugee and displacement crisis since World War II. We have more than 60 million people displaced throughout the world. Violence is intensifying particularly in Africa and the Middle East. And for many of those folks the services that they need are simply not being met. You've got children who are years out of school. I mean the impact of what is happening to them right now will be generational. Kids growing up without education, without parents, without opportunity, who grow into a lifetime of poverty trauma. I mean these are communities and families that are being completely destroyed. We can't forget that.

AMT: Samantha Nutt, thanks for coming in.

SAMANTHA NUTT: Thank you so much.

AMT: Samantha Nutt, founder and executive director of War Child Canada, assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto. She joined us in our Toronto studio. We wanted to talk to officials at the Bangladesh embassy in Ottawa about all of this we did not hear back.

[Music: Bridge]

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Last week on The Current we looked into the coming legalization of recreational marijuana, and the concerns about its safety and contamination. Medical marijuana users have reported concerns. And I spoke with Dan Clarke who tests medical marijuana at A&L laboratories in London, Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

DAN CLARKE: It is a concern. We talk about medical cannabis. It is a pharmaceutical that needs to be regulated and make sure the industry is providing a very safe product to the client.

AMT: Well the discussion generated a lot of interest from listeners, including from Dr. Brian Hart, who said contamination is not the only thing people should be concerned about. He wrote to us in part: "I am a family physician and deal with the side effects of marijuana in my practice every day. Believe me, they're serious—but not due to pesticides—rather the drug! Marijuana is NOT benign. When an 18-year-old comes into my clinic with anxiety and a 35-pound weight loss, I put my pen down and ask how much he's smoking. I have yet to be wrong." Dr. Brian Hart practices in Gananoque, Ontario. That's where we've reached him now. Hello.

DR. BRIAN HART: Good morning Anna Maria. Thanks for including me in the conversation.

AMT: First of all, how often do you get requests for prescriptions for medical marijuana?

DR. BRIAN HART: I would say probably, increasing frequency, but probably two to three times per week.

AMT: And what do your patients want it for?

DR. BRIAN HART: I would say there are two types of patients. A lot of patients that come in are already using it. Some of them may have cannabis use disorder. Some of them may be looking to switch from a drug that they don't want to be on like alcohol over to marijuana. And these would be inappropriate referrals. The other type of patient are the patients that actually have really serious medical issues. Those that have essential tremor that we haven't been able to control. People that have M.S. fatigue. People that have the indications that traditionally medical marijuana has been indicated for.

AMT: And do you not prescribe it at all then? Even in a case like that.

DR. BRIAN HART: Well it's really difficult in that—so usually when medications come to market they come to market with a proven efficacy. There are studies that are done that show that it work. And we know that it works in a certain percentage of people. And we know what to expect in terms of short-term side effects. With medical marijuana it's come to market and then we're trying to find what it works for. And we really don't have the appropriate studies to show the short and certainly not the long-term side effects. But in people that have exhausted everything else, so people that come in with severe essential tremor or with multiple sclerosis related spasms, I have no trouble referring them along to be counselled and receive medical marijuana as long as they go into it eyes open. But it is a third or fourth line intervention. It's not a first line.

AMT: And where do you send them?

DR. BRIAN HART: Well in Kingston there's three or four different marijuana referral centres. And I think these folks have doctors and they do interviews and then they'll prescribe it. So when you say I don't prescribe it, so my brother is a lawyer and he says there's a term have done or cause to have done, and I know that if I refer them they will 100 percent of the time receive the medication and receive the drug.

AMT: And is that a problem in your mind that if they're referred to some other clinic they'll get it automatically or usually.

DR. BRIAN HART: Yeah, you interviewed Rosy Mondin last week and you wondered why pesticides that shouldn't be in the marijuana were there, and she referred to it as a bit of the Wild West. And when it first started I saw everybody that went was given medical marijuana. And we do know with medical marijuana there are some absolute contraindications. For example anyone under 25 should not receive medical marijuana. Anyone with a marijuana use disorder should not be prescribed marijuana. Anybody with significant anxiety or an untreated psychiatric illness should not receive medical marijuana. And I have seen numerous cases where these people have been given the drug without much follow up or supervision.

AMT: And this goes back to your first point which is that normally if a drug comes on the market it's been clinically tested. We know a lot more about it and we're going by anecdotal now.

DR. BRIAN HART: Oh absolutely. And please don't get me wrong. I go to work every day trying to help my patients. And the issue is if marijuana is proven to be a benefit I'm going to be the first one to prescribe it. And if we've run out of everything else and there's a hint that it may be a benefit I will help my patients receive it. But the trouble is I do radio interviews, I guess what once every 53 years, so I Googled performance anxiety. And if you actually look at Health Canada, medical marijuana one of the indications is performance anxiety. And if you actually look at this study, 23 people were given synthetic THC before doing a simulated performance and 95 percent reported that they felt better about the performance afterwards. That's not a study. That's hearsay. I would argue that if I had put a little scotch in my coffee this morning I might feel a little less nervous right now.

AMT: You sound just fine Brian Hart [laughs].

DR. BRIAN HART: [Laughs].

AMT: But I want to ask you about that because you also said you wouldn't prescribe to someone under the age of 25. Why not?

DR. BRIAN HART: I think you may have had articles on before, but the brain is under construction really until age 25 and the younger you are the more harm marijuana can do. And it can be permanent. And I see it in my clinic. My real concern is that this is an epidemic among high school students and I often see young man in particular coming in and they're suffering from tremendous anxiety and weight loss and anorexia. And this was a bit of a learning curve for me. I mean remember back in the 80s if anyone bought marijuan, the next stop was the grocery store for Doritos. You would expect weight gain and apathy. But you're experiencing significant anxiety and weight loss. The issue is that under 25 these folks are most susceptible to that. And there is some evidence that it can decrease long term IQ and have permanent bad effects.

AMT: You raise many questions that we in the media need to follow up on. Thank you for your letter to us and for speaking to me today.

DR. BRIAN HART: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

AMT: Bye bye. That is Dr. Brian Hart. He's a family physician in Gananoque, Ontario. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Guest host Laurie Brown speaks with acclaimed Canadian playwright and director Jordan Tannahill. We began the program hearing from delegates to the Hope Forum underway in Ottawa. It's a gathering of Indigenous youth to talk about the youth suicide crisis in their communities. That forum is organized in part by the We Matter Campaign. And part of that group's work is collecting video messages from young people across the country and uploading them to its website. Our first guest talked about that. They're powerful messages of hope meant to be heard by those young people who may be thinking about suicide. So we're going to leave you today with a few of their words. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Acoustic]

VOICE 1: Hi my name's Chasity Fiddler, and I just wanted to tell you this, when life brings you down, don't hurt yourself. I learned that the hard way. A very hard way.

VOICE 2: My name is Corey Chubb. I currently reside in Oxford House, Manitoba. I work as suicide prevention in my community. I wanted to share a message with you. If you're going through some tough times, don't give up.

VOICE 3: Just when you're mad and sad, whatever you're feeling, just go look up at the sky. Go look at something. Do something that you love. Don't hurt yourself tonight. Don't take your life tonight. You don't deserve that. What you deserve is happiness even if it's just for a while. Smile everyday even if it's just for a second.

VOICE 4: I lived in a numb state for years. What I mean by that is that I didn't care for anything. Things just happen and I dealt with it. I never acknowledged it to my younger years. How I got through it was that I had a realization. I realized along my journey, that in order to move forward was to acknowledge everything that I had gone through. Get some help and look for motivation and some places where I needed improvement. That's what kicked off my journey. My tip for you is to keep going no matter what happens. Keep going.

VOICE 3: It's like just look at the birds fly by, they never give up. They just take a rest and they continue flying on. If they get a broken wing, they will wait for it to heal. It will take time. Yes it will. But, don't worry. You matter. I matter. We all matter.

[Music: Acoustic]

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January 22, 2018 Episode Transcript

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